Competing Cosmologies: Interpreting the Sky

Co-curated by the Wende’s Curatorial Department and NASA historian Lois Rosson, Competing Cosmologies explores how new discoveries in space exploration during and after the Cold War have inspired visual artists around the world. Organized in four sections — Astronomy, the Space Race, Futurisms, and Aliens — the exhibition brings together artists from the East, the West, and the Global South, tracing how they responded to advances in space science and technology and connected these discoveries to their own cultural contexts.

The exhibition combines historical artifacts, including a full-scale model of Sputnik-1, an original meteorite, and cosmos-themed sculptures, with contemporary and Cold War-era artwork inspired by the cosmos.

Artists include Pyotr Belenok, Nuotama Bodomo, Chesley Bonestell, Beatriz Cortez, David van Eyssen, Bettina Forget, Chitra Ganesh, Mark Steven Greenfield, Lia Halloran, Jitish Kallat, Paul Laffoley, Alexei Leonov, Aaron Samuel Mulenga, Truong Minh Quy, Sun Ra, Leo Raudys, Ionel Talpazan, Fedir Tetyanych, and Li Tianbing.