50 Years of NASA Art
NASA | ART 50 Years of Exploration – SpacePod 2011.06.20 from Spacevidcast on Vimeo.
From Rockwell to Rauschenberg, NASA has had a long tradition of inviting artists to give their perspective on the agency’s work through different forms of art.
Painting, textile, sculpture, music and poetry fill a traveling exhibit called NASA Art | 50 Years of Exploration. NASA art program curator Bert Ulrich takes visitors through an artistic tour-de-force of rocket launches, space shuttle explosions, missions to Mars and Mercury as well as key moments in the agency’s history.
For a brief time, NASA even had an artist-in-residence program. Laurie Anderson has the distinction of being the first and only NASA artist-in-residence after the program was cut following her two-year experience in 2003-2004.
The artists who have graced NASA with their work reads like a who’s who of modern art. It features nearly five decades of creations by artists as diverse as Annie Leibovitz, Nam June Paik, Norman Rockwell, Doug and Mike Starn, Andy Warhol and William Wegman.
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- Remembering Columbia, 2006. Chakia Booker. Rubber.
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- First Steps, 1963. Mitchell Jamieson. Acrylic, gauze, paper on canvas.
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- Apollo 8 Coming Home, 1969. Robert T. McCall. Oil on Canvas
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- Liftoff at 15 Seconds, 1982. Jack Merlmutter. Oil on canvas.
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- Grissom and Young, 1965. Norman Rockwell. Oil on canvas.
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- Moonwalk (1), 1987. Andy Warhol. Silkscreen on paper
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- Chip and Batty Explore Space, 2001. William Wegman. Photograph.
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- Fluid Dynamics, 1995. Tina York. Mixed Media.
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- Eileen Collins, 1999. Annie Leibovitz. Photograph
Fashion Designer Stephen Sprouse has a 3-D dress with images of the Mars Rover on it that was featured in a New York fashion week show in 2000.
Ulrich says, “Artists have been given a different perspective in how NASA works and they’ve been able to document the agency and the different chapters of NASA’s history through the media of art.”
NASA founding art program director Founding director James Dean once said, “At the core, both art and aerospace exploration search for a meaning to life.”
Seventy-three of nearly 3,000 works in its collection are in a traveling exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C through mid September.
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