SEATTLE, May 3, 2023—On June 10, The Museum of Flight will boldly depart from its traditional flightpath to host a museum-wide, community-focused celebration connecting the region’s vibrant arts scene with its rich aerospace history. The six-month Art+Flight project will exhibit dozens of artworks in all mediums by over 30 artists, including three newly commissioned murals and an installation drawn from the Museum’s art collection.

The project will also host an artist-in-residence, and offer performing arts programs, artist lectures, an interactive mural project and frequent family arts activities through January 7, 2024.

“The Museum is renowned for its expansive aerospace collections and vivid storytelling,” said The Museum of Flight President and CEO Matt Hayes. “For over 55 years we have shared the physicality of flying machines, their place in history and the people close to them. Now we're taking a look from new perspectives.

"As visitors we might have profound impressions and share deep connections to what’s in this museum, but do not have the means to express it. This is when artists can help. Art+Flight will elevate our experience and help us to realize our feelings, enhance our perceptions, and remind us of the awe and joy of flight through the language of art. The project will also engage the Museum with the rich diversity of the local community in entirely new ways for us, and that is very exciting.”

MEDIA ALERT
On June 8, there will be a media preview from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
This informal preview will bring together exhibiting artists, guest curators and Museum staff for interviews and photo opportunities throughout the Art+Flight exhibitions. Please contact PR Manager Ted Huetter for further details or questions.

Art+Flight Exhibitions Opening June 10:

Art+Flight in the Red Barn
The original Boeing Aircraft factory building, the Red Barn, is the primary site for most of the Art+Flight exhibitions and will fill three galleries with a group exhibition, new media installation, and artist-in-residence.

A juried Group Exhibition with art from twenty-four artists explores flight with glass sculptures, experimental textiles, prints, photographs and paintings.

A New Media installation by Ferdale, Wash.-based Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) features a multi-media experience interpreting flight as a physical and metaphorical journey. From Sept. 16 to Jan. 7, 2024, Hopinka's installation will be replaced with a new media installation by Seattle-based artist Jessica Dolence.

Seattle Artist-in-Residence Harriet Salmon will transform aircraft structures into art using traditional weaving techniques in willow and hardwoods.

Great Gallery Mural
Artist Joe Nix has been commissioned to paint a 60-foot mural in the Museum’s largest indoor space, the Great Gallery. Nix’s work takes inspiration from aircraft and spacecraft in the Museum to explore aviation’s technicality beauty.

Great Gallery Sculpture
Northwest-based artist Nina Vichayapai uses fabric as a language to reveal how surroundings embody humankind. Her large cloud sculpture, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, will hang above a walkway overlooking the Great Gallery and will be “seeded” with wishes written by visitors to the Museum.

M&S Gallery Woven Art
Jeffrey Stenbom is a post-disciplinary artist living in Bloomington, Minn. Stenbom’s Freedom’s Threads, weaves over 100 military uniforms personally worn by persons serving in every branch of the U.S. military—including those in airborne units—dating back to World War II.

The mural-size artwork will hang in the M&S Gallery surrounded by the planes and artifacts of air wars.

Side Gallery Interactive Mural
Tacoma-based RYAN! Feddersen specializes in large-scale, site-specific interactive art pieces. Feddersen’s photo booth mural, Aura, will interact with Museum visitors between the APOLLO exhibit and children’s Flight Zone play area. Aura is a modified star chart overlayed with a map depicting the 27,000 pieces of human-made space trash currently being tracked.

East Campus Window Mural
Seattle-based Angelina Villalobos integrates her art with graffiti, anime and folklore with elements of her upbringing. Villalobos has been commissioned to design an expansive mural stretching across the Museum’s main entrance windows. “For this piece,” she explained, “I wanted to tell that story of growth, not just personal, but the spirit of exploration for all of us.”

Pedestrian Bridge Audio Installation
Paul Rucker is a visual artist, composer and musician formerly of Seattle. His sound installation, Trails of Vapor, was created for the Museum’s landmark pedestrian bridge in 2009 and will be played in its entirety during Art+Flight.

Pedestrian Bridge Visual Installation
The Boeing Company created a series of colorful employee motivational posters during the development of the Boeing 2707 supersonic airliner in the late 1960s. For Art+Flight the Museum reaches into its archives for these groovy 60s designs, and will mount semi-transparent enlargements of them on the glass panels lining the Museum’s pedestrian bridge.

Image: Artists Joe Nix and Devin Liston begin painting a mural for Art+Flight in the Museum's Great Gallery on May 2, 2023. Ted Huetter/The Museum of Flight.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact:

Ted Huetter/Senior Public Relations Manager
T: 206.768.7105  C: 206.455.5360  Email: thuetter@museumofflight.org