Wanted: Interplanetary Art Smuggler

Art Smuggler

Wonderfully interesting. Apparently Frosty Myers along with some other popular artists in the 60's (including Andy Warhol) wanted to send create the first museum on a different celestial body. NASA wasn't interested so they had to smuggle it to the moon!

Apparently it wasn't just this one little thing either. Crew members stuffed photos and other small things they could hide on the lander without affecting its performance into any nook and cranny they could.

I'm sure some of this stuff won't last in the vacuum of space, but its pretty interesting to wonder what exactly could be aboard some of the spacecraft we have sent out.

I would think fragile objects would last longer in a vacuum sealed environment. Since oxygen and our basic breathing air has effects on all sorts of materials.

Even though Space is not a complete vacuum.

I see no point in this okay, say the museum is set up, now what?

No one can see it.

I think someone is just dreaming way too much.

[edit on 19-6-2010 by Quickfix]

[edit on 19-6-2010 by Quickfix]

reply to post by thedarklingthrush

Thanks, I never heard about this before, it's interesting. I'm not sure why they had to smuggle it though, it sounds like it was small enough to fit into the astronauts' PPKs if they could get the astronauts to take them:

science.nasa.gov...

"Each Apollo astronaut was allowed to take a small number of personal items to the Moon," continued Jack. Their PPKs, or Personal Preference Kits, were often filled with trinkets--coins, stamps or mission patches. Al Shepard took golf balls. On Gemini 3, John Young brought a corned beef sandwich. "My father chose trees," says Jack. "It was his way of paying tribute to the US Forest Service."

Originally posted by Quickfix
I see no point in this okay, say the museum is set up, now what?

No one can see it.

I think someone is just dreaming way too much.

You and I can't see them. But some visions of the future project that mankind might return to the moon someday, and that tourists might even visit there, in which case the Apollo landing sites would be museums of a sort. So it's probably more for humans of the future than for us, however, I doubt the 12 guys who walked on the moon had any clue that they would be the last for at least half a century, and 4 or 5 decades later we still wouldn't have sent anyone back to the moon.

Some future visitor to the moon is going to go looking for these things. And finding these small artworks may make the site more interesting for them.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
reply to post by thedarklingthrush

 

Thanks, I never heard about this before, it's interesting. I'm not sure why they had to smuggle it though, it sounds like it was small enough to fit into the astronauts' PPKs if they could get the astronauts to take them

Maybe its just me but I would love to get something on the moon of mine. If I was an astronaut you would have had to pay me quite a bit to get something of YOURS in my PPK.

The astronauts did actually bring some art themselves art this guy is called the Astronaut Jeweler
Jeweler

Something else that could have been an issue was the artists themselves, its possible NASA didn't want to associate with those people as they were pretty controversial, especially Warhol.

The fact that its smuggling in a way never seen before may have been an appeal to those guys as well, and it could been part of the art project itself.