Joseph Cornell: Reaching for the Moon
Joseph Cornell, Americana: Natural Philosophy (What Makes the Weather?), ca. 1959, masonite, paper, paint, colored pencil, graphite, and ink, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Robert Lehrman in honor of Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, 1991.90, © 1959, The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation
Nine years after John F. Kennedy gave his speech, “The New Frontier,” Neil Armstrong became the first person to step foot on the moon. At the height of the Cold War, the American flag Armstrong raised claimed victory for the United States. The Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957 had spurred the United States into action. The White House’s “Introduction to Outer Space,” published March 1958 outlined the justifications for undertaking a national space program: “The first of these factors is the compelling urge of man to explore and to discover, the thrust of curiosity that leads men to try to go where no one has gone before. Most of the surface of the earth has now been explored and men now turn to the exploration of outer space as their next objective.” Several months later, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, was founded.
