30,000 works of art fly to the Moon: a half-poetic, half-commercial adventure

Paintings by Van Gogh, Monet or Dali on the Moon? This idea may seem fanciful, far-fetched, even absurd. However, it could happen in the future. With his Lunar Codex project, Samuel Peralta intends to send art into space. A graduate in physics, poet and art collector, as he defines himself, the Canadian of Filipino origin has set himself the challenge of sending 30,000 works of art, literature, cinema, music, theater and more. The man with multiple hats said he wanted to constitute a “time capsule of humanity”. The pieces shipped were created by nearly 30,000 artists from 157 different countries. They will be sent into orbit aboard three modules of NASA's CLPS program which will take off successively between October 2023 and November 2024. Samuel Peralta told The New York Times. There is nothing like it anywhere.”

Most of these works already existed, although some were specially commissioned for the occasion. These include microscopic images of woodcuts by Ukrainian artist Olesya Dzhurayeva, Emerald Girl, a Lego brick portrait of Pauline Aubey, and a series of poems titled The Polaris Trilogy: Poems for the Moon from all continents, including Antarctica. This author's own books will also find their place here, for good measure.

Of course, at the price of the kilo launched into space, it is not a question of sending the originals but digital copies recorded on memory cards or reductions printed on nickel-based NanoFiches. Samuel Perlalta largely finances the expedition, estimated at several tens of thousands of dollars. A significant sum which remains however far from the price of a “space tourism” ticket ($450,000) according to the Canadian.

If Peralta does not have words bombastic enough to promote his idea, the works he will send to the Moon will not be the first. The first of these is the Moon Museum taken in 1969. It is a thin ceramic plate containing six drawings by prominent artists of the late 1960s, including Andy Warhol. A decade later, a scaled-down memorial, titled Fallen Astronaut, joined it. This small aluminum sculpture, 8.5 cm high, was deposited by the crew of the Apollo 15 mission in August 1971. The statuette bears a commemorative plaque in tribute to the astronauts and cosmonauts who died during space exploration.