There are scientists and there are artists. There are the
caricatures of spectacle-sporting number crunchers wielding
calculators and there are odd-mannered creative types toting
pallets. As local artist and former NASA employee Jim Dean found
out 50 years ago, they are more alike than different. Dean, a
resident artist at the Torpedo Factory, founded NASAs art
program in 1963 to capitalize on the publics growing interest in
the rest of the universe. The latest exhibit of the project,
NASA / ART: 50 Years of Exploration, is currently on display at
the National Air and Space Museum in D.C. The novel idea of
outer space and competition with the Russians had enveloped the
public in the late 1950s and early 60s. NASA had the unique
ability to predict when history would be made. It had to be
documented not only with photographs, but with paint brushes,
too. NASA had hundreds of cameras capturing everything that was
going on, so you couldnt compete with the factual record, Dean
said from his third-floor studio at t