National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
BANK is pleased to announce that three works by Michael Najjar have been acquired into the permanent collection of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. The museum has now added "liquid gravity" (2013), "orbital debris_2020" (2013), and "kinetic drift" (2014) to its collection, all drawn from the artist’s internationally acclaimed "outer space" series.
The National Air and Space Museum, part of the Smithsonian Institution, is one of the world's most renowned museums and attracts several million visitors each year. Its extraordinary collection documents the history of aviation and space exploration, including iconic artifacts such as the Wright brothers' aircraft, the Spirit of St. Louis, and objects from the Apollo missions.
Following a multi-year renovation, the museum has opened the Flight and the Arts Center, offering new perspectives on the intersection of human imagination, technological innovation, and the exploration of air and space. Najjar's three works are currently on view in the center's inaugural exhibition, "The Art of Air and Space: Interpretations of Flight," where they will remain on display for one year. The center also features a solo exhibition by Robert Rauschenberg, with 30 works many of which are being exhibited publicly for the first time. The exhibition commemorates Rauschenberg's invitation by NASA in the late 1960s to document the Apollo program, with flight remaining a recurring theme throughout his career.
The three works by Najjar now in the museum's collection reflect the intersection of technology and art, bearing witness to the past and future of human exploration. "liquid gravity" (2013) is based on Najjar's training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia. Wearing an Orlan-M spacesuit, the artist performed a simulated spacewalk in the world’s largest hydrolab, suspended between time and space, exploring the relationship between gravity and the body. "kinetic drift" (2014) originated from a parabolic flight training session, during which Najjar experienced spatial disorientation in weightlessness aboard a Russian Ilyushin IL-76 aircraft. Using photographs taken during the weightless phases, he created a fictional environment in which familiar points of orientation dissolve. "orbital debris_2020" (2013) presents an overhead view of a full-scale International Space Station model submerged in the hydrolab, where reflections on the water and layered, semi-transparent perspectives merge into a hybrid space between reality and fiction, while also anticipating the ISS's planned deorbit into the Pacific Ocean after its retirement.
