IN PLANE VIEW Abstractions of FlightExhibition Information

“Painting has come to an end. Who can do anything better than this propeller? Can you?”

–Marcel Duchamp

Focusing on the interplay between functional technology and craftsman-ship, In Plain View redirects our attention to the often–overlooked simple beauty of aircraft design. In a uniquely intimate style, this exhibition engages the viewer with close-up facets, sculptural forms, and life-like elements of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum’s internationally renowned aircraft collection. With her playful and discerning eye, Smithsonian photographer Carolyn Russo transforms technology into art providing new landscapes ripe for exploration.

Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis 24’’ x 24’’

>> Focke-Wulf Fw 190 F 36” x 36”

In Plain View Features 56 large-format Giclée framed photographs, text and quotation panels, and labels. This moderate-security exhibition, which occupies approxi-mately 300 running feet, will open at the National Air and Space Museum. A companion book with essays by Anne Collins Goodyear and foreword by Patty Wagstaff is available from powerHouse Books.

“For not only is life put in new patterns from the air, but it is somehow arrested, frozen in form.”

–Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Grumman F8F-2Bearcat Conquest 1 36” x 36”

>> Northrop N-1M 24” x 24”

Broken up into five categories—Speed, Bursts, Movement; Flora, Fauna, and Anthropomorphism; Graphics; Textures and Skin; and Propellers—which occasionally overlap, Russo’s photographs reveal new layers of meaning from the whimsical to the profound through their unconventional representations of well-known air and spacecraft. In combina-tion with quotes from aviation and space pioneers, poets, and other artists, whose words resonate with these images, Russo’s work evokes the beauty, wonder, excitement, and thrill as-sociated with flight.

North American F-86 A Sabre 24” x 24”

>> Wittman Chief Oshkosh / Buster 36” x 36”

“I have often said that the lure of flying is the lure of beauty, and I need no other flight to convince me that the reason flyers fly, whether they know it or not, is the esthetic appeal of flying.”

–Amelia Earhart

Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis

CFM International CFM56-2 Engine

North American P-51D Mustang Willit Run?

Homing Overlay Experiment Test Vehicle

Mercury Capsule 15B Freedom 7 II

Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird

Lockheed P-38J Lightning

North American X-15

Aichi M6A1 Seiran

Arado Ar 234 B Blitz

Soyuz Instrument Module

Kreider-Reisner KR-34C

Lear Jet 23

Lockheed F-104A Starfighter

McDonnell F-4S Phantom II

North American F-86A Sabre

Lockheed 5B Vega

Skylab Orbital Workshop

Space Shuttle Enterprise

SPAD XVI

Supermarine Spitfire Mk VII

Wittman Chief Oshkosh / Buster

Extra 260

Focke-Wulf Fw 190 F

Northrop Gamma Polar Star

Northrop N-1M

Kellet XO-60

Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia

Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay

Boeing 307 Stratoliner Clipper Flying Cloud

Focke-Wulf Ta152H

Halberstadt CL.IV

Junkers Ju 52/3m

Lockheed 5C Vega Winnie Mae

McDonnell F-4S Phantom II

Mercury Capsule “Big Joe”

Mercury Friendship 7

Robinson R44 Astro G-MURY

Soyuz TM-10 Landing Module

Turner RT-14 Meteor

1903 Wright Flyer

Albatros D.Va

Farman F.60

Hawker Hurricane Mk. IIC

Pitts Special S-1C Little Stinker

SpaceShipOne

Ryan NYP Spirit of St. Louis

Hiller XH-44 Hiller-Copter

Langley Aerodrome A

Grumman F8F-2 Bearcat Conquest 1

The Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum maintains the largest collection of historic aircraft and spacecraft in the world. It is also a vital center for research into the history, science, and technology of aviation and space flight, as well as planetary science and terrestrial geology and geophysics.

Featured Artifacts

Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird 24” x 24”

“We are coming into a new era of flight, an era in which all past conception of time and distance is changing and changing at a very, very rapid rate.”

–Allan Lockheed

Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia

24” x 24”

Carolyn Russo has worked as a photographer at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum since 1988. She is author of Artifacts of Flight (Harry N. Abrams, 2003) and Women and Flight: Portraits of Contemporary Women Pilots (Bulfinch Press, 1997). She was curator of the companion Woman and Flight exhibition which toured the nation for seven years. Artifacts of Flight received awards from the American Institute of Graphic Arts’ 50 Books/50 Covers Competition and the American Association of Museums’ Publications Design competition. She holds a BFA in photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and her photographs have appeared in both solo and group shows. Currently, she is working on a new project photographing airport towers.

Anne Collins Goodyear is Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery. Goodyear is the author of essays in Reconsidering a Century of Flight (UNC Press, 2003) and exhibition catalogues for the North Caro-lina Museum of Art’s Defying Gravity: Contemporary Flight and Flight (Prestel, 2003) and the Art Institute of Chicago’s 2001: Building for Space Travel (Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 2001). She is co-editor of Flight: A Cel-ebration of 100 years in Art and Literature (Welcome Books, 2003).

Exhibition and Publication Collaborators

Patty Wagstaff is a six-time member of the USA Aerobatic Team, has won the gold, silver, and bronze medals in Olympic-level international aerobatic competition, and is the first woman to win the title of U.S. National Aerobatic champion and one of the few people to win it three times. Flying before millions of airshow spectators each year, her breathtaking performances give spectators a front-row seat view of the precision and complexity of modern, unlimited hard-core aerobatics. Her smooth, aggressive style sets the standard for performers the world over.

Cover:Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21F-13 “Fishbed C”24” x 24”

Brochure D

esign by Monica Escobar

Visit us at www.nasm.si.edu

Content/SchedulingCarolyn Russo(202) 633– 2389RussoC@si.edu

Back:Lockheed 5B Vega24” x 24”