Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center: Robert McCall's Aviation & spaceflight mural

Quoting New York TImes | Robert T. McCall, Space Artist, Dies at 90 March 5, 2010:

Robert T. McCall, Space Artist, Dies at 90

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Published: March 5, 2010

Robert T. McCall, an artist whose fervor for space exploration found expression in his six-story-tall mural at the National Air and Space Museum and two postage stamps canceled on the Moon, died on Feb. 26 in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 90.

The cause was heart failure, his wife, Louise, said.Mr. McCall eagerly translated his youthful enthusiasm for drawing knights in shining armor on spirited steeds into paintings of intrepid astronauts in gleaming space vehicles, both real and imagined. When NASA in 1962 hit on the idea of enlisting artists to promote its mission, Mr. McCall was one of the first three chosen.

He went on to create hundreds of vivid paintings, from representations of gleaming spaceships to futuristic dream cities where shopping centers float in space. His most famous image may be the gargantuan mural, showing events from the creation of the universe to men walking on the Moon, on the south lobby wall of the National Air and Space Museum on the National Mall in Washington. More than 10 million people a year pass it.

Or it might be his painting showing a space vehicle darting from the bay of a wheel-shaped space station, which was used in a poster for Stanley Kubrick’s landmark 1968 film, “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Then there are the mission patches he made for astronauts, including one for the last men to walk on the Moon; the many paintings that hang in military buildings from the Pentagon to the Air Force Academy; and the enormous mural at the Johnson Space Center in Houston showing the progression of the American space program, from the first Mercury missions to the space shuttle.

He also designed more than a dozen stamps for the United States Postal Service, and a set was ceremoniously canceled on the lunar surface by David Scott, commander of the Apollo 15 mission.

H. Lester Cooke, former curator of painting at the National Gallery of Art, once noted that Mr. McCall had “the quality and scope of imagination to travel in space, and carry us along with him.” Isaac Asimov was widely quoted as calling Mr. McCall “the nearest thing we have to an artist in residence in outer space.”

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Taken in: United States / Virginia / Dulles International Airport (show map)

Taken on: May 24, 2011

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Sets appears in: • Lens: Zoom: 18-200, 10-24, 18-55, 55-200 • Lens: AF-S DX VR Zoom-NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED more » • Date: 2011 • Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, part of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, outside Washington DC • Place: Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center • Washington DC 2011 • Eye-Fi uploads 2011 • Place: North America « less

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