All Stories

Jim Dean's contributions to the Museum’s art collection and NASA are invaluable. Dean left an indelible mark in the fields of art and science as our Museum’s first art curator from 1974 to 1980 and as director of the NASA Art Program from the early 1960s to 1974.

The Museum's Preservation and Restoration Unit recently prepared the P-51D Mustang for display in the new and upcoming Jay I. Kislak World War II in the Air gallery. The Mustang needed to suspended dynamically from the ceiling as if it were in flight.

Take a closer looks at details on the Star Trek starship Enterprise studio model from the original series, and learn more about the conservation process.  

Read about the process behind the conservation of "Rosie's Drill," a WWII-era artifact owned and used by Helen Nelson Brinkley on the Boeing B-17 aircraft-assembly line. Conservation treatment involved historical research, technical study, scientific analysis, and the sourcing, testing, and application of a specialized consolidant for the crumbling rubber cord.

National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia celebrates a twenty year anniversary.

In the upcoming new World War I in the Air gallery, two artifacts, wooden propellers manufactured for the American aviation production program will be on display. The  propellers were treated by the Museum's Conservation team in preparation for the exhibition.

As a cub in the 1930s, Gilmore made aviation history when he traveled around the United States with the flamboyant and colorful aviator Roscoe Turner as a mascot for the Gilmore Oil Company. This is the final piece in a three-part blog series about the conservation treatment of Gilmore the Flying Lion. Explore how the Museum balanced caring for the original taxidermy with the goal to present Gilmore as lifelike as possible.

AirSpace is looking up! We're exploring how we hang really, really big, priceless artifacts from the ceiling in the museum.

The National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center turns 20.

One of the icons of the Museum was the black-and-white German V-2 ballistic missile. Ever since the building opened in July 1976, it stood in Space Hall, which in 1997 was revised to become Space Race. That rocket will return in a new guise, with green camouflage paint, when the hall reopens in a few years as RTX Living in the Space Age.