A lunar project!
The Moon Gallery Foundation wants to create the first museum on the Moon.
The University of Leiden in the Netherlands and the European Space Agency (ESA) created this foundation for this purpose.
The museum, built in the form of an 8 centimeter square plate, will house 64 miniature works by international artists in one centimeter boxes.
The museum is to fly in February 2022 to the International Space Station aboard the Cygnus NG-17, a test for its final anchoring on the lunar star with an enlargement of its cube to 10 centimeters to exhibit 100 works there in 2025.
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Each miniature object has been scrupulously thought out by the project managers. “
The question of weight like mass, size, is crucial. The heavier or more cumbersome the object, the more complex it is to transport in space – and expensive. This is the reason why we have imposed this constraint: each artefact must be able to fit in a cubic centimetre"
, explains a spokesperson for the platform, which will contain heterogeneous works, both artistic and scientific to "
bring the best of humanity on the moon
.
Historical tributes, societal comments, committed works and scientific approaches, the miniature museum will host the work of artists from all over the world, ranging from Italy to Vietnam, via France, Japan, Austria and the United States. .
For example, in one of the boxes the size of a stamp, it will be possible to observe the homage paid to the physicist and astronomer Galileo by the Italian artist Renzo Pasquale.
His work, titled
Gold Cube
, celebrates the Italian University of Padua where the artist studied, along with Galileo from 1592 to 1610.
The work
Gold Cube
by Italian artist Renzo Pasquale pays homage to Galileo.
Moon Gallery Foundation
France stands out with the presence of the explorer, researcher and artist Benjamin Pothier, who pays homage to the French artist Yves Klein, known for his painting
IKB3 Monochrome bleu
. His work, soberly called
ISS Blue Marble
"
consists of a sculpture representing a drop of Yves Klein IKB, a blue painting created by Yves Klein, suspended in weightlessness" , explains the foundation, specifying that the samples of the
IKB
color
are provided thanks to a unique partnership with the artist's archives, now owned by his widow, Rotraut Klein Moquay.
Other artists have chosen to adopt a scientific approach, like the German researcher and artist Daniel Michalik, nicknamed the "
skyentist
", who developed his work called
Submission
.
Held in a glass bottle, the artist offers
"the purest air on earth"
, harvested at the South Pole in Antarctica.
"A sample of air that has traveled thousands of kilometers on unpolluted virgin terrain,"
says the foundation.
The artwork
Submission
by German Daniel Michalik containing “
the purest air in the world
” Moon Gallery Foundation
But for these artists, the exhibition has a certain price. They will each have to spend on average between 500 and 3000 euros in order to hope to exhibit in space.
Technically, the Moon Gallery Foundation museum is not the first “lunar” cultural project. Indeed, we must go back to July 21, 1969 with the completion of the Apollo 11 mission, where man, for the first time in his history, set foot on the moon. Only four months later, during the Apollo 12 mission, a temporary and fraudulent cultural offer was launched into space without NASA's approval. This is materialized by a tiny ceramic tile, the size of a stamp, featuring the drawings of 6 renowned artists: Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, John Chamberlain, David Novros, Claes Oldenburg and Forrest Myers, the initiator of the project. It is possible to see Andy Warhol's initials in the upper left corner of the plaque,often interpreted as a rocket or a penis reports MoMA, a museum in which a reproduction of this galactic gallery is exhibited.
The Moon Museum, 1969 MoMA, Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Moon Gallery Foundation project is innovative since it aims to be permanent and placed on the Moon.
A breakthrough that the foundation's team welcomes, seeing it as the “
last frontier of human habitat, which will allow us to spread our values throughout the universe.
Because, even if the Moon is destined to be the final destination of the gallery, the idea does not stop there: our work is based on the establishment of the cultural dialogue of humanity beyond our planet of origin
".
Lunar, you said lunar...