Millions of visitors flock to the National Air and Space Museum each year. Expecting to find the world’s largest collection of historic aircraft, they are not disappointed. Far fewer people are aware that the Museum also houses one of the world’s finest collections of art, inspired by the great adventure of flight and expressing our fascination with the wonders of the sky and the universe.
Paul Edward Garber (1899-1992), the curator who pioneered the display of aircraft at the Smithsonian, was the son of an art dealer and insisted that works of flight-related art would be a part of the National Aeronautical Collection. The legislation authorizing th construction of a new National Air and Space Museum mandated that an art gallery be included in the building plan and established an art unit headed by a staff curator.
    James Dean, the artist-administrator who had played a key role in the creation of the NASA art program, was named the Museum s first curator of art in 1974. He brought the NASA art collection to the Museum with him. Dean was succeeded as acting chairman by William Good in 1981 and by Mary Henderson as chairman in 1983. Henderson and her colleague, Susan Lawson-Bell (an IAAA member - ed.), supervised the growth and expansion of the art collection and the rich program of exhibitions featured in the Flight and the Arts Gallery, 1983-1997. Today, the Museum’s art collection includes almost 3,600 paintings, drawings, original prints, reproductions, architectural drawings, sculptures, textiles, craft and jewelry items, and materials such as games and toys that reflect aerospace themes in popular culture. The collection contains works of art ranging from rare, two-centuries-old prints documenting the invention of the balloon to the work of recent artists who interpret flight in a variety of media and styles.
    Many artists of international stature, including Alexander Calder, Eric Sloane, Richard Estes, Morris Graves, and Robert Rauschenberg, are represented in the collection. Norman Rockwell, Peter Hurd, Paul Sample, Jamie Wyeth, Lamar Dodd, Mitchell Jamieson and Paul Calle are among the well-known artists who participated in the NASA art program and are well represented in the Museum s collection. Still other artists, including R.G. Smith, Frank Wooton, Robert McCall, Keith Ferris, William Phillips, Ted Wilbur, and Robert Taylor, have attained international stature as artists who specialize in interpreting our aerospace heritage.
    If art can bring to life great moments in the history of flight, it can also help us to imagine the future. As author Howard McCurdy explains in Space and the American Imagination, artists like Chesley Bonestell "...did for space what Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran accomplished for the American western frontier." Just as the artists of a century ago portrayed the wonders of Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon for an audience of stay-at-home easterners, so Bonestell and the other "space artists" of the post World War II era kindled the desire to travel beyond the atmosphere by helping us to imagine what it would be like to live and work in space and stand on the surface of another world.
    Thanks to the generosity of Mr. Frederick C. Durant Ill, 1999 was a banner
year for space art at the NASM. More than simply a friend of the Museum, Durant is an important part of our history. A graduate of Lehigh University and a naval aviator in World War II, he became involved in rocketry while working at Bell Aircraft, 1946-47, and as director of engineering for the Naval Air Rocket Test Station, 1948-51. Elected president of the American Rocket Society in 1953, Durant was heavily involved in a variety of projects that set the stage for the coming of the space age.
    S. Paul Johnston, then director of the Museum, hired Durant in 1964 to bring the Smithsonian into the space age. As assistant director and head of the new Astronautics department, Durant was responsible for transforming the National Air Museum into the National Air and Space Museum. Under his guidance, the Museum became the official repository for all flown NASA hardware. Satellites, spacecraft, space suits, and other space paraphernalia soon joined the aircraft on display at the Museum. But Durant knew that it would require more than hardware to capture the imagination of visitors and communicate the excitement of space flight.
    Like so many of the engineers who pioneered space flight, Durant was an enthusiastic admirer of artists like Chesley Bonestell, Fred Freeman, and Rolf KIep, whose illustrations for books and national magazines made the dream of space flight seem very real indeed. As a leader in the astronautical community, Durant befriended first-generation space artists and supported the work of new­comers to the genre. He also insisted that space art find a home in the Museum s art collection and was responsible for our earliest exhibitions of work in the field.
    Following his retirement from the Smithsonian in 1980, Durant’s collection of space art continued to grow, as did his activities on behalf of the space art community. He became the representative of leading artists, including Chesley Bonestell and Ludek Pesek; introduced new artists to the public; helped to organize exhibitions; and wrote books and articles publicizing the best work in the field.
    In 1999 Durant decided to present to the National Air and Space Museum the core of the personal collection of space art that he and his wife, the late Carolyn "Pip" Durant, had built over a lifetime. The 64 paintings in the Durant gift include works by such masters as Bonestell, Pesek, Pierre Mion, Robert McCall, Paul Calle, Andrei Sokolov, Alexei Leonov, David A. Hardy, James Cunningham, and Ron Miller. These acquisitions elevate the Museum to the premier position among the institutions of the world that collect and display space art. The Museum appreciates this extraordinary gift from a man who has played a critically important role in shaping the modern National Air and Space Museum.