Lunar exploration
Provided
Apollo 11's Lunar Excursion Module returns to orbit after the first landing on the moon.
The notion that there is a great, yawning chasm separating art and science dissolves, like most misperceptions, under close inspection.
As ways of experiencing -- and deciphering -- the cosmos, they can be complementary. Especially when the subject of scrutiny is a neighboring body we thought we knew so well: the moon.
The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, the College of Charleston School of Sciences and Mathematics and the Marlene and Nathan Addlestone Library offer an object lesson in this fruitful interaction beginning Saturday when they unveil "From the Moon: Mapping & Exploration."
On view in the New Sciences Center Building and the special collections department of the library, the exhibition will be accompanied from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. on opening day by Moon Fest, an outdoor event for students and teachers; a lecture by Dr. Carle Pieters, professor of geological sciences at Brown University; and a 7 p.m. public opening reception.
"The braid that joins artists and scientists is that both are involved in posing questions that are outside of what we have currently defined," says Halsey Director Mark Sloan, who co-curated the exhibition with Roger Manley, director of the Gregg Museum of Art at North Carolina State University. "Science is about the unknown, about creating hypotheses that can be tested, which then opens up new questions that we didn't know to ask.
"Artists often have the capacity to ask questions from another perspective. 'Have you thought about it in this way?' And visual art is about getting at that which cannot necessarily be reached by language alone. The two disciplines are quite similar and complementary, yet this potential interaction between art and science is too seldom explored."
Liftoff
Sloan and Manley fashioned the exhibition, 2 1/2 years in development, with lunar science consultant Dr. Cassandra Runyon, professor of planetary geology at the College of Charleston, and project manager Laura E. Moses of the Halsey.
"At base, the exhibition traces the trajectory of cartography and photography, which are two art forms, going from Galileo to Google Moon," Sloan says. "We have original maps -- the real deal -- going back to 1609. We're looking at the history of mapping and how humans have visualized and understood the moon, starting with the naked eye, telescopes and the drawings published by Galileo. And we're tracing this development of technologies that have allowed us this incredible, privileged access to our sister sphere."
Apart from the exhibition's centerpiece -- a moon rock from the Apollo 15 mission -- the exhibit also employs a Smart Board (a large, interactive whiteboard that allows navigation by touch) and 3-D imaging devices to afford a dramatic tour of the moon.
Providing a backdrop for the exhibition is a 13-minute montage about going to the moon by Charleston filmmaker John Reynold. Musician Bill Carson composed a soundtrack for the piece.
Wealth of materials
The search for materials ushered Manley to the Paris Observatory and other planetary archives, while Sloan ventured to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown University, Harvard University and the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
"Then a local alum of the college who received an exhibit announcement called to say he had a collection of lunar charts and maps dating from 1493," Sloan recalls. "He prefers to remain anonymous, but what he has loaned us will be the centerpiece of the library show we're doing. We travel the world searching for these things, and two-thirds of what we found overseas were here already!"
Since the curators had so much from which to choose from NASA and other sources, they decided on a unifying focus.
"We used Apollo 15 and the location where this rock was taken -- the Hadley Rille (a valley in the northern hemisphere of the moon) -- as the focal point from which this whole exhibition is presented."
Apollo 15 (July 26-Aug. 7, 1971) was the ninth manned mission of the Apollo program and the fourth to land on the moon. It was distinguished by being the first of the "J missions," characterized as long-duration lunar stays with a greater focus on science. It was on this mission that the Lunar Roving Vehicle first was deployed.
Educational outreach
An expanded version of the exhibition, scheduled to coincide with the 2013 publication of the project book (by W.W. Norton & Co.), will enjoy a national tour.
Meanwhile, the target audience here is the general public, albeit with a special emphasis on reaching out to kindergarten through the 12th grade.
"Fully half the money we received in the grant from NASA goes to the exhibit, and the other half goes to education," Sloan says. "In addition to guest speakers and the guided tours for school groups that will be coming into the exhibit every day -- we've already conducted some teacher training workshops -- we also have Moon Fest on Saturday afternoon."
Moon Fest's hands-on educational activities will be led by Runyon; Cyndi Hall, program director for the South Carolina Space Grant Consortium; and Elizabeth Joyner, site director for the South Carolina Maritime Foundation and Sanders-Clyde Elementary/Middle School.
"From the Moon" is produced by the Halsey and the Northeast Planetary Data Center at Brown University in cooperation with NASA, the NASA Lunar Science Institute and the Lunar Planetary Institute in Houston as well as the college's School of the Arts, Addlestone Library and School of Sciences and Mathematics.
