Historical Context

Close Looking

Spend a few minutes looking at the work of art above. What do you notice? What do you think the artist is illustrating? Why do you think that?

Color & Style

This picture is a detailed view of the work of art above. Where within the work of art is this view? What do you notice about the style or colors from this detail view that you didn't notice when looking at the larger picture? While the style may seem simple, the artist, Alma May Thomas, actually did several sketches with pencil and watercolor prior to completing the painting.

Other Works

The artist of the work above, Alma May Thomas, also created other works like the one pictured above. What do you notice about this piece- how is it similar and different from the work above? This work is called Astronauts' Glimpse of Earth. Thinking about the artist's style and the subject of this painting, what do you think Alma Thomas cared about?

Who was Alma Thomas?

Alma Woodsey Thomas (1891-1978) was an artist who lived and worked in Washington, DC. She painted scenes of experiences that inspired her, like the Apollo 11 launch which she watched on TV. She went to school at Howard University in Washington DC and then went to the Teachers College at Columbia University in New York City. After school, she taught at Shaw Junior High School in Washington DC.

Thomas was an abstract artist. Her first exhibition was at Howard University, while her second was at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. She was the first African American woman to receive a solo exhibition at the Whitney. Today, she is considered an important artist in the Washington Color School movement, a movement in Washington DC that started in the late 1950s.

The Apollo 11 Mission captured the fascination of many different people, including a variety of artists.

Compare the work of artists comissioned by NASA on the left with the work of Alma Thomas on the right.

Apollo 11, John Meigs

Lift Off, Alma Thomas

Man's First Step on the Moon, Norman Rockwell

Astronauts' Glimpse of Earth, Alma Thomas

Do the works of art above show space exploration in the same way? Artists like Rockwell, Meigs, and even Andy Warhol participated in NASA's Artist's Cooperation Program. Why might it be important to collect art work showing space exploration?

What was NASA's Artist's Cooperation Program?

In 1962, just four years after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was created as a federal agency, James Webb established NASA’s Artist’s Cooperation Program. Modeled after the U.S. Air Force’s art program, Webb hoped that the agency’s commission of fine art would help communicate the cultural significance of the space program’s initial advancements. Administrators still needed to sell the idea that traveling to the Moon was a possibility to the tax-paying American public. NASA believed that artistic interpretations of its projects would offer less fleeting narratives than newspaper or television coverage. Thus, throughout the 1960s, several well-known American artists were periodically invited to document NASA’s early space-faring activities.

Throughout the Apollo program, a range of artists were given unrestricted access to NASA’s various facilities in order to collect usable reference materials. Artists like Norman Rockwell, Robert McCall, Fred Freeman, and Robert Rauschenberg all participated in the program, lending their images and reputations to NASA’s public engagement efforts in the years leading up to the Moon landing. After the conclusion of the Apollo program, the need for commissioned art seemed less acute, and throughout the 1970s the art program slowed. In 1975, Jim Dean, a founder of the NASA art program, along with Lester Cooke, a curator of paintings at the National Gallery of Art, played a key role in bringing the collection to the Museum under the guidance of Michael Collins, the director for the Museum at the time.

The Lunar Landing didn't happen in isolation- other events were happening in the world and around the launch. Take a closer look at the picture below to learn more about what was going on in the United States in 1969.

Close Looking

Look at the picture above, and think about the different perspectives, or points of view, in this picture. Are there any objects that might represent a point of view?

Pick one point of view and answer these questions:

  1. What do you think the person or object perceives or is aware of?

  2. What might the person or object know about or believe?

  3. What might the person or object care about?


Reflect on your responses. What made you answer the way you did?

What's happening in the picture above?

The day before the launch of Apollo 11, Rev. Ralph Abernathy led a protest to the gates of the Kennedy Space Center. Still reeling from the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Abernathy led the Poor People’s Campaign of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to NASA’s doorstep to draw attention to economic and racial inequality, singing “We Shall Overcome” as they marched. Abernathy chose to stage this phase of the SCLC’s ongoing protest campaign at the site of the lunar launch because it highlighted how much could be done with a dedicated national effort.

“I’ve never bothered painting the ugly things in life. People struggling, having difficulty. You meet that when you go out, and then you have to come back and see the same thing hanging on the wall. No. I wanted something beautiful that you could sit down and look at."

-Alma Thomas to the Washington Post

What other historical events impacted Alma May Thomas and her art?

Painting in an abstract style allowed the artist to respond to the racial injustices of her day and the polarized achievements of the Moon landings where African Americans and women were excluded, with an imagined world—both on Earth and outer space—where all colors are represented and equal. In The Politics of Space: Alma Thomas and Race Relations in the 1960s America, art historian Cynthia Hodge-Thorne asserts that Thomas depicted new worlds with “limitless opportunities” in space through her abstractions.3 Indeed she did. In Astronauts’ Glimpse of the Earth, 1974, Thomas imagines the sight of our spherical planet from space in hues of the color blue, with hints of various color in orange, pink, red, and green poking through the surface of the canvas to represent life and a multiracial society working together. Alma Thomas’s art is political—and she responded with color. Her art inspires us to work and live in harmony and peace in a beautiful world of color.

Alma Thomas’s abstractions were made during the civil rights movement in the United States, with protests and riots in her city to end legalized racial discrimination. This time in history resonates with the recent protests in response to the tragic racialized deaths of African American men and women—and centuries of inequality for Americans of color. Further, the recent SpaceX/NASA crewed launch took place in the midst of the recent protests, reminiscent of the Apollo launches during the civil rights movement, a historical parallel explored by Margaret Weitekamp in this recent blog. While Thomas’s abstractions may not be depictions of the civil rights movements, they do represent her response to the world around her as an African American woman during a turbulent time in our history.