The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Art Program is responsible for about three thousand works in all. Artists are given a small payment for each piece. When the program began artists received eight hundred fifty dollars. Now they get about twenty-five hundred. NASA now asks about one artist a year to add to its collection.

Some visitors to the National Air and Space Museum do not expect to find an art show there. Like Lori Hopkin of Vancouver, Canada.

LORI HOPKINS: “I was surprised that there was, like, paintings. I thought there’d be more photography. I was surprised.”

Does she have a deeper understanding of the space program?

LORI HOPKINS: “Yeah, it was a different view on the whole thing. They did a good job.”

Mike Stanfill of Adamsville, Tennessee said the art exhibit surprised him, too.

MIKE STANFILL: “I was just expecting a lot of old planes and spaceships.”

He found some of the artwork extremely unusual, like the Andy Warhol piece.

MIKE STANFILL: “It was out of space, so to speak…I guess a sixties term, ‘way out.’

Becky Goins was visiting from Virginia Beach, Virginia. She thought art at the Air and Space Museum made perfect sense.

BECKY GOINS: “Every little boy draws spaceships and astronauts and men on the moon. So it’s only one step further to think that they’d come up with some really good art that they would put out in a museum.”