On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 launched from Cape Canaveral on its
historic mission to land on the Moon. Forty years later,
National Air and Space Museum visitors will have the unique
opportunity of seeing the Moon through the eyes of the only
artist who walked its surface. Alan Bean, who served on the
Apollo 12 mission later that year, was the fourth man to walk on
the Moon. After 18 years as an astronaut, he resigned from NASA
in 1981 to dedicate his life to painting his memories of Apollo.
Bean employs an impressionistic style to depict lunar
landscapes, portraits of fellow moonwalkers and views of Earth
from space. In 1999, he began adding textures to his paintings.
When preparing a painting, he indents the surface with a Moon
boot, makes scrapes with a lunar rock hammer and grinds circles
with a core bit. In 2001, he began adding to his paintings
minute amounts of Moon dust embedded in the keepsake patches
from his spacesuit. With more than 50 works of art on display as
well as some of the museum’s artifact