Top to Bottom: Robert Rauschenberg and James Wyeth

“These were taken the day before the launch in 1969,” explains watercolor painter James Dean in his Torpedo Factory studio. He is referring to personal photos he took of these famous artists at the Kennedy Space Center. Rauschenberg and Wyeth were invited by the NASA Art Program to document the mission to land the first human being on the moon.

We are peering into Dean’s intriguing past as the Founding Director of the NASA Art Program, when he worked closely with several of the best known American artists, including Norman Rockwell and Lamar Dodd, between 1962 and 1974.

With the 50th anniversary of NASA this year, Dean’s expertise was called upon to help the current curator of NASA Art Program and the Smithsonian Institution to organize the art exhibition NASA / ART 50 Years of Exploration. The show of 73 works will travel the United States for two years starting in October. A preview of the show is currently on display at the National Air and Space Museum on the National Mall. Dean co-authored a book by the same name that will be published in the fall by the Harry Abrams Co., New York.

Breaking from his typically quiet, unassuming demeanor, Dean eagerly shares the purpose and conception of the NASA Art program.

“In the time of early space exploration, NASA recorded every activity with hundreds of cameras. Not much can be added to this factual visual record. However, the greater emotional impact and historic significance of these events was not being conveyed.”

As a result, it was decided that some of America’s best known artists should be invited to witness these historic events and, through their skill and imagination, record the world’s excitement in the way only an artist can.

As an artist himself, Dean has often been asked what he learned by working with these well-known artistic figures.

“Really, it was how they thought, rather than what they did. I learned how they decide what to do and how they choose to execute their work. It was interesting to hear them talk about it afterward, whether they accomplished what they set out to do.”

First Steps by Mitchell Jamieson

Referring to the inspiration behind Mitchell Jamieson’s First Steps, Dean remembers putting Jamieson on a carrier in the mid-Pacific to await the splashdown of Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper in May 1963, after 22 orbits of the earth. Dean adds that Jamieson worked briefly at the Torpedo Factory Art Center in the late 1970s.

In 1980, Dean left his position as Curator of Art at the National Air and Space Museum to dedicate his time to painting, primarily in his Torpedo Factory studio. His watercolor paintings of Maine and other American scenes have received many accolades, and one of his pieces is found in the personal collection of H. Lester Cooke, former Curator of Painting at the National Gallery of Art.

His watercolor piece Shuttle Flowers was painted in the early 1980s when he was invited by NASA to create several works recording his impressions of the space shuttle program at Cape Canaveral and a landing in the Mojave Desert.

Shuttle Flowers might be a reflection of the artist himself. With an expansive foreground of daisies, a common flower, you feel a sense of familiarity and tranquility. Upon closer look, you see something unexpected, something of incredible power poised to make an impact on the world as we know it.

“What thrills me - here is an art program I started nearly 50 years ago and people are still interested in it. I was in the right place at the right time. This was a government program that was so positive, and I was able to work with some of the best known artists of the time on this incredible project.”

“And the pièce de résistance is that they paid me to do it!” Dean chuckles. “I would have done it for nothing.”

View selected work from the exhibition.