Artist Helps NASA Scientists Bring Their Work to Galleries
By JOHN J. MILLER
Published: July 29, 1993
Correction Appended
For nearly 40 years, Robert Stromberg, chief engineer of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has had two jobs: making spacecraft for NASA and creating an art that has outshone any other in the genre. Mr. Stromberg has sold the art on the world’s best-known galleries, and his creations now are on display in museums, universities and galleries at home and abroad. On Friday, he will show his paintings at the National Academy of Sciences, in Washington, where they will be displayed in the room next to one by a contemporary Chinese figure, Mr. Stromberg says.
There are other signs of the influence of technology on his art. He once worked for a computer company, for instance, and his art has its technology underlines, too. For example, his “Moonrise” is based on a computer-generated, artificial-color image of Earth that is a composite of several images taken in different positions over the course of a day.
In one painting, he has used an image of a spacecraft that has been modified to include a photograph of a comet. His paintings are as much about art as science, he says.
“I always tried to take what I know from NASA and put it away into a new and different context,” he says. “I used to hang one of my paintings on my wall and say to myself, ‘Maybe that won’t work, but I can keep it.’ “
Artists are seldom at all content to be art; they must put their art out in the world. “Artists are the people who take their work out into the light,” says Howard Morland, the director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington. “It is the same principle that people put their money under the pillow: That’s how it works. They take their work out in the open, not to hide it from the world, but to show it to the world.”
Mr. Stromberg, who