Museum of Flight

Art + Flight at Seattle’s Museum of Flight

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(Handpainted Mural by Joe Nix)

Seattle’s Museum of Flight is already well-known as the largest nonprofit air & space museum.

Now the sprawling aviation museum is making a bid for being well-known for commissioning and exhibiting art.

The Museum of Flight’s Art+Flight project, running through January 7, 2024, includes dozens of artworks in all mediums by over 30 artists.

Included are three newly commissioned murals and an installation drawn from the Museum’s own art collection.

Here are just a few pieces included in the show.

Aura (below), by RYAN! Feddersen depicts the scale of human-made space junk that orbits Earth.

Viewers are invited to try and spot 8 of the estimated 27,000-35,000 pieces of space junk currently being tracked. The list includes a camera, a glove, a pair of pliers, a spatula, a thermal blanket, a tool bag, a toothbrush, and a wrench.

Jeffrey Veregge mixes Native American traditions with contemporary techniques in his “Salish Geek” style. He has two pieces in the Juried Group Show: We Chose (Apollo Program), and Re-Entry (Space Shuttle Program).

These pieces, Valenci Four and Thorania, are by glass sculptor Rik Allen.

And Jhun Carpio’s Artemis SLS Rocket is made with wooden stirrers and toothpicks.

In addition to the works on display, the Museum of Flight’s Art + Flight project is hosting an artist-in-residence, and presenting arts programs, artist lectures, an interactive mural project, and plenty of other activities through January 7, 2024.

The Stuck at the Airport arts teams is heading to the exhibit this weekend, so stay tuned for more images from the show.

*All photos courtesy Museum of Flight

Airport Valentines + Miniature Airplanes + More

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Valentine’s Day is around the corner and airports and airlines are getting to land some love.

In Las Vegas, the pop-up marriage license bureau is back at the Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) to help streamline the uptick in weddings that take place in Sin City around Valentine’s Day.

Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) will once again be handing out hundreds of red, pink, and white carnations to passengers on Valentine’s Day. Look for the PHL Volunteer Navigator team starting at 10 am in Terminal AEast and F.

At PHL, Philadelphia artist Carole Loeffler will also be onsite Valentine’s Day handing out hundreds of her hand-cut red felt hearts bearing rolled messages of love. Her HeartFelt giveaways will occur from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm, across from the food court located between Terminals B and C.

Big Flying Things Made Very Small in Seattle

Seattle’s Museum of Flight will be hosting one of the world’s largest displays of model planes, cars, tanks, ships, figures, sci-fi, and more during the 2023 NorthWest Scale Modelers Show on Feb. 18-19. Special exhibits include models celebrating Black History Month and the animated world of Gundam.

The event is all weekend and is free with admission to the Museum.

Plenty of Super Bowl Swag at Phoenix Sky Harbor Int’l Airport

And if you’re headed to the Big Game in person, it looks like you’ll have no problem finding swag to show your support for your favorite team.

An Orchestra Will Take Over This Aviation Museum

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University of Stuttgart Academic Orchestra.

 We’re not sure how this will work. Or why it is happening. But we’re sure it will be great.

On September 21, from 3 pm to 5 pm, the University of Stuttgart Academic Orchestra will take over all five main galleries at Seattle’s Museum of Flight.

The plan is for the Orchestra to divide into five separate chamber groups and station themselves in the aviation and space galleries on both the Museum’s East and West Campuses.

Each group plans to play selections by composers including Mendelssohn and Weber to celebrate aviation, space, history, and science.

Here’s the program:

Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826): Quintet for clarinet and strings in B-flat major, Op. 34.
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1947): String octet in E-flat major, Op. 20.
Joachim Raff (1822-1882): Sinfonietta for winds in F major, Op. 188.
Plus arrangements for brass ensemble.

The Museum performances are part of a North American tour by the Stuttgart, Germany-based orchestra, and are free with admission to the Museum of Flight.

Museum of Flight No Stranger to Music

Seattle Opera Dress Rehearsal at Museum of Flight

This isn’t the first time a music production has taken over the Museum of Flight.

During the pandemic, the Seattle Opera was scheduled to present a performance of “Flight.” The three-act opera was written in 1998 by composer Jonathan Dove and librettist April De Angelis and has been performed around the world.

Here’s the story of the opera:

“An omniscient air traffic controller watches over a departure lounge bustling with relentlessly cheerful flight attendants, an excitable couple on vacation, a mysterious older woman, and a diplomat and his expectant wife, all of whom must spend the night to wait out a storm. At the heart of the show is the Refugee, a character inspired by Mehran Karimi Nasseri, who lived in Charles de Gaulle Airport near Paris for almost 18 years.”

The pandemic meant that Seattle Opera could not perform the show live. But rather than pass on the opportunity to present it, the Seattle Opera teamed up with Seattle’s Museum of Flight and filmed the opera there.

For National Book Lovers Day: our new book

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Amelia Earhart Reading,” International Women’s Air & Space Museum,

August 9 was National Book Lovers Day and we celebrated by visiting some of the places in Seattle that are featured in our new book, 111 Places in Seattle That You Must Not Miss, which begins shipping today.

The book is part of the international 111 Places series, which offers locals and experienced travelers guides to hidden treasures, overlooked gems, and charming curious places in great cities.

For the Seattle guide, I’m pointing readers to many airport and aviation-related items around town, including the art collections at both Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) and King County International Airport – Boeing Field (BFI).

Richard Elliot’s ‘Eyes on the World’ at SEA
Brad Miller’s “30,000 Feet” Photo by Joe Freemans Courtesy 4Culture

The Museum of Flight is represented in the book, with the story of the Taylor Aerocar, an early flying car that worked.

Taylor Aerocar III, one wing folded back for ground travel, one wing attached for flight.

And we also point people to the tiny pocket park on the shores of Lake Union where they’ll find a plaque marking the spot where the first Boeing plane took off.

The plaque reads “From this site, Boeing launched it first airplane, the B&W, in 1916.”

Of course, there are plenty of other non-aviation sites in the book, including the Giant Shoe Museum, the world’s greenest commercial building, a haunted staircase, the Rubber Chicken Museum, a shop where you can buy personalized magic wands, the place where you can rent a rowboat for free, and lots more.

We hope you’ll get a copy of 111 Places in Seattle That You Must Not Miss from your favorite bookseller.

Get you free museum tickets

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Between shutdowns, staff layoffs, and budget cuts, the pandemic has been tough on museums and cultural attractions across the United States.

But that won’t stop more than 1000 museums, zoos, and cultural centers from opening their doors for free on Saturday, September 18 as part of Smithsonian magazine’s Museum Day 2021.

Each participating museum will offer free admission to guests who present a museum day ticket downloaded from the Museum Day site. Visitors may request one ticket per email and each ticket provides general admission to the ticket holder and one guest.

In addition to offering savings on admission fees, which can be quite hefty, Museum Day gives guests a chance to revisit a favorite museum or explore a new one.

The event, which was canceled last year due to COVID-19, celebrates the reopening of museums and the return of arts and cultural experiences with this year’s theme of Experience America.

You can search by city, zip code, or state for a museum near you. Here are a few examples of museums you might want to visit with your free Museum Day ticket – or any day.

Flight Path Museum & Learning Center at LAX

The Flight Path Museum and Learning Center is a great aviation and aerospace museum at Los Angeles International Airport.

LAX Flight Path Museum airplane models

Gold Coast Railroad Museum: Miami, FL

The museum houses more than 40 historic rail cars including the Presidential Rail Car ‘Ferdinand Magellan,’ and Florida East Coast Steam Locomotive #153. 

Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, NY

The legendary aircraft carrier Intrepid is a National Historic Landmark. See 28 aircraft, the space shuttle Enterprise, and enter Growler, the only guided missile submarine open to the public.

Museum of Flight, Seattle, WA

The Museum of Flight is the world’s largest independent air and space museum. It displays over 160 airplanes and spacecraft on a 23-acre campus. The museum’s six buildings include the original Boeing Aircraft factory.