All Stories

Astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt lived a short but deeply impactful life, during which her achievements failed to receive sufficient recognition. On the centennial of her death, we reflect on her life and legacy.

The image of the space–suited Apollo 11 astronaut standing and facing the camera became an iconic symbol of American accomplishment and was reproduced in books, films, television, and items of popular culture.  

The Sun has been an inspiration in our creation of paintings, poems, music, stories, and sculptures, to name a few. Explore how artists express and depict the Sun in works throughout the Smithsonian’s collections.

Artist Raquel Forner became one of the earliest artists to depict outer space in paintings and continued to create images of space almost exclusively throughout her life. Forner’s humanistic vision in expressed her work which was a crucial note of optimism during the uncertain period of Cold War politics. Explore Forner's vision of space through her unique paintings.

During World War II the United States government used colorful and catchy posters to build public support for the war and remind pilots, mechanics, and other aviation workers to follow best practices for safety, resource preservation, and efficiency.

Did you know the National Air and Space Museum has a huge art collection? Yeah, we keep that secret pretty well. It all STEMs (see what we did there?) from a program organized by NASA beginning in the 1960s where a small number of American artists got tons of access to launch sites, clean rooms, space suits, spacecraft—you name it, they painted it.

Anne Noggle (1922–2005) confronts themes of gender equality and aging through portraits of World War II women pilots in the United States and the Soviet Union. Her photographs convey their grit, defiance, femininity, and love of flying. Above all, they capture a spirit that bonds the rare group of aviation heroines together.

In 1977, Fred Eversley was invited to work as the first artist in residence in the newly-opened National Air and Space Museum. His art is often grouped with the “Light and Space” artworks made in California during the 1960s–1970s, a movement associated with the minimalist and abstract qualities of art informed by the aerospace technologies and industries on the west coast.

Over the summer we collaborated with the artist Diplo on a companion album to his new record MMXX. It’s called Under Ancient Skies and it’s available wherever you stream music. But we also created an audio tour of the night sky for a series of small, outdoor concerts Diplo performed.

Interplanetary road trips take a WHILE. So for this episode of Voyages to Mars, while we cruise onward towards the Red Planet, we’re listening to some poetry that pays tribute to long duration space travel.