Sculptures in Space

To see Jeff Koons’s new series, you’d have to travel all the way to the moon! Last February, a spacecraft called Odysseus carried a transparent cube packed with 125 miniature moon sculptures to the lunar surface. Koons says the series, Moon Phases, is the first “authorized” art to land on the moon. But not everyone agrees.

Other art has made it to the moon, but there’s some dispute about the official record and even what counts as art. In 1969, a NASA engineer secretly hid a stamp-sized tile featuring drawings on the Apollo 12 lunar lander. It included work by Andy Warhol and five others. But the tile wasn’t approved to be on the spacecraft.

Then in 1971, the crew of Apollo 15 placed a small statue, Fallen Astronaut, by Belgian artist Paul Van Hoeydonck on the moon. It honors the 14 American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts who died in the early days of space exploration. Some argue, though, that as a memorial, the statue technically shouldn’t be considered art.

Many are questioning who “authorized” Koons’s Moon Phases as the first art officially on the moon. That’s because a private company operated the Odysseus spacecraft—not a government space agency. And while Koons’s sculptures were the only physical works of art aboard Odysseus, the spacecraft also carried digital art and microscopic etchings of works by 222 other artists. Several of them called out Koons on social media, saying he shouldn’t be taking all the credit.