All Aboard the Artrain

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 30, 1999 | by Patrick Butters

The touring exhibit, a train crammed with artworks, tours the country by rail.

It started in Ann Arbor, Mich., almost 30 years ago and has picked up steam ever since. Artrain USA was the 1969 brainstorm of Michigan's first lady, Helen Milliken, and E. Ray Scott, then-executive director of the Michigan Council of the Arts, who wanted to bring exhibits from the Detroit Institute of Art to the state's rural residents. The nonprofit organization, which borrows from other museums and has no permanent collection, began touring the country in the mid-1970s.

The current exhibit, "Artistry of Space," features out-of-this-world perspectives of artists from Peter Max to Robert Rauschenberg. Work in the show is grouped by themes: the moon landing, the space shuttle and exploration of the planets. The rolling museum of three cars -- a 1949 New York Central sleeper and twin 1949 Pennsylvania Railroad diners -- also contains offices and a gift shop. Eight staffers travel with the exhibit. Among the works in the show:

* Norman Rockwell's Man's First Step on the Moon. Astronaut Neil Armstrong grasps the left railing of the ladder of the lunar module. In the next moment, his left heel, at a 45-degree angle, will step onto the green-gray, powdery Moon, with Earth as a thin crescent of white in the background.

* Andy Warhol's Moonwalk. The pop artist depicts a pinkish, blue-blurred Buzz Aldrin next to a neon-looking American flag backed by jetblack darkness.

* Henry Casselli's reflective When Thoughts Turn Inward. This study in faded brown shows a somber side of John Young during suit-ups for Columbia's launch on April 12, 1981.

The 78 paintings, prints, drawings and multimedia works in the exhibit come from the collections of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Air and Space Museum. NASA began its art program in 1962. Since then, more than 250 artists have contributed to the collection. The works have been seen at the Kennedy Space Center as well as the Air and Space Museum, but this is the first time they have been brought together

Artrain has been particularly effective in cities and towns that have no museums. About 2.6 million people have visited the train, which has toured some 600 communities in 44 states and the District of Columbia. Funding for the project comes primarily from donations, with about 20 percent from the communities themselves, and from organizations such as the National Endowment for the Arts. Support for "Artistry of Space" comes from CSX Transportation, the Norfolk Southern Railway Co. and Daimler-Chrysler.

The train began its current tour in July in Washington, then traveled to Taneytown, Md., northwest of Baltimore. (Railway Co. will donate an engine to pull Artrain there.) From Taneytown, Artrain will travel north into Pennsylvania and through New England before heading west, where its journey will end in 2002. For more information, call (734) 747-8300.