Moon Gallery: Test Flight

Moon Gallery Foundation is developing an art gallery to be sent to the Moon, which will contribute to the establishment of the first lunar outpost. One hundred artworks will be integrated into a 10 x 10 x 1 grid tray to fly to the Moon in 2025. The Moon is the ultimate home of the gallery, but the idea neither starts nor ends there: our work is based on expanding humanity’s cultural dialogue beyond our home planet. The gallery met the cosmos for the very first time in low Earth orbit at the beginning of 2022.

For our “Test Flight” in collaboration with Nanoracks, we flew the gallery to the International Space Station aboard the NG-17 rocket within the framework of a Northrop Grumman Cygnus resupply mission. This edition of the gallery grid features 8×8 cells housing 64 physical artefacts and one engraved AR artwork. Sixty-five art projects featured in the gallery reached the final frontier of human habitation and marked the historical meeting point of the Moon Gallery and the cosmos. Reaching low Earth orbit on our way to the Moon is the first step in extending our cultural dialogue to space.

Moon Gallery has become a part of the Nanolabs technical payload, where it served as a target for camera observations and performance tests. The character of the gallery offered a diverse range of materials and behaviors for the camera to detect, and in return, Moon Gallery artists got a chance to learn about the performance of their artworks in space. The result of these observations will serve as a strong basis for the next Moon Gallery missions as well as a source of precious experience for future space artists to learn from.

Moon Gallery: Test Flight to the International Space Station (ISS) is a precursor mission that contributed to our understanding of the future possibilities for art in space and strengthened collaboration between the art and space sectors. We are excited to grow and welcome more like-minded people to be part of this journey with us.

The onboarding artists whose artworks are selected for the ISS mission:

Adrian Labaut Hernandez, Alberta Vita, Alessandro Ravagnan, Alexandra Arshanskaya, Aneta Zeleznikova, Annamaria Zanella, Aoife van Linden Tol, Arti Struyanskiy, Benjamin Pothier, Beyond Earth, Carmelo Pampillonio & Samuel Hertz, Christoph Draeger & Martin Frei, Dana LaMonda, Daniel Michalik, Eduardo Kac, Elina Aekseeva, Eline Radstake, Emmanuele Villani, Eva Petric, Francesca Andreozzi, Guiseppe Fava, Gabriele Lorusso, Gillian Fitzpatrick & Justin Donnelly, Guy Livingston, Hady Milani, Hans Brooymans, Henk Rogers, Imaginary Futures, Isabella Douzoglou, Jack Madden, Jamal Ageli, João Prates, Johan Recén Larsson, Jone Suardi, Kristina Okan, Lakshmi Mohanbabu, Lakshmi Mohanbabu & Matteo Seita, Lisa Pettibone, Lisa Van Casand, Lorenzo Viscidi Bluer, Mai Wada & Anastasia Kokori, Marcus Neustetter, Micha Klein, Mark IJzerman, Martin Sjardijn, Mary Kuiper, Masahito Ono, Mateja Šušteršič Dimic & Eva Petric, Max Baraitser Smith, Minna Philips, Paula Romero Franco, Peter Westenbrink, Plamen Yordanov, Priyanka Das Rajkakati, Renato Japi, Renzo Pasquale, Ronald Vles, Ruth Best, Caroline, Hansje, Vera & Sophie Hooghiemstra, Jorick de Quaasteniet, Studio Samira Boon, Téa Boyarchuk, Thomas Heidtmann, Tuuli Utriainen, The Gathering