Smithsonian.com

“In Plane View: Abstractions of Flight,” a new exhibition at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum that opened March 21, is a collection of 56 large-format photographs by Carolyn Russo that will toy with your perceptions. These hyper close-ups of aerial icons focus on parts rather than the whole aircraft—reminiscent of O’Keefe’s flowers, Warhol’s soup cans and a Technicolor movie musical.

The images are strikingly bizarre with exceptionally vivid colors, providing an open buffet of eye candy that is a sensory experience that cannot be had by looking at aircraft strung from the ceiling. (Above: these are the grooves within the exhaust cone of the North American X-15. The pattern of light and dark streaks were etched into the exhaust cone by the extremely hot gas expelled through it.)

Russo has been a photographer at the Air and Space Museum since 1988 and began working on the project in 2004, armed with her handheld Hasselblad and a background in portrait photography. The aim was to divine the persona of each aircraft, accentuating qualities that the average tourist would not think to uncover.

“We live with these planes,” Russo said of her subjects. “I see them every day. They become beings.”

“In Plane View” can be found on the ground floor of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum until January 2, 2009, and a book of Russo’s work is available from powerHouse books.

(Photo by Carolyn Russo/NASM, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution)

Ever seen a Thunderbirds’ air show and those daring diamond formations, and wondered what it takes to become one of those pilots? And, even more, what it would it take for a woman to join the ranks? The Thunderbirds formed in 1953, but it took 52 years for a woman to fit the mix. Major Nicole Malachowski debuted as the first female Thunderbird in March 2006. So why the gender lag, you ask?

Dorothy Cochrane, curator of the National Air and Space Museum’s aeronautics division, filled museum visitors in Wednesday at a noontime “Ask the Expert” discussion.

At the end of each year, the U.S. Air Force calls for pilots—top guns, basically, who have a minimum of 1,000 hours of flight time—to apply to the Thunderbirds. The current team (not a bunch of generals at the Pentagon) makes the selections, whittling the applicant pool down to 12 semifinalists, who are invited to spend an air-show day with the Thunderbirds. Five finalists interact with everyone from the pilots to the ground crew and take part in several interviews. Ultimately, three new members are ushered in.

“It’s not necessarily who is the best pilot, it’s who’s going to get along. Personality is a huge, huge part of the selection,” says Cochrane. “All of these pilots are top notch.”

Women started flight training in the 1970s, but they were prevented from flying any of the top aircraft. Once the decision was made in the 1990s to let women pilot front-line fighters, females had to work their way through the system. It was just a matter of time before there were female captains and majors qualified to apply for the Thunderbirds, according to Cochrane.

“Sooner or later, someone makes the decision, ‘Let’s have the first woman.’ In some cases, it might just be, ‘Well, somebody’s got to do it. Let us be the first one.’ Or it may just be that someone like Nicole comes along, and they think, ‘She is actually perfect for this, and we’ve never had a woman. Why is that?’”

Major Malachowski’s commitment, credentials and personality made her the one. After graduating fourth in her class at the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1996, she gained international and semi-combat experience in England, Kosovo and Baghdad. About blazing the way for women, Cochrane says, “She wasn’t really concerned with breaking this glass ceiling. To her, it’s ‘I just want to fly, and I want to fly with the best.’”

Having wrapped up her two-year tour with the Thunderbirds, Malachowski plans to donate her flight gear to the Air and Space Museum. She’ll be speaking at the museum on Thursday, March 27. Find details about the event here.

There’s nothing overtly impressive about the section of a luncheonette counter placed behind glass in a corner of the National Museum of American History’s temporary gallery (“Treasures of American History,” on display at the Air and Space Museum while the NMAH gets a makeover).

The padded vinyl seats on the stools look a bit grubby, and there are scuff marks on the base of the counter where customers’ feet once fidgeted while they sipped their sodas.

But an object is rarely just what it appears to be on the surface – it has a narrative context that would often remain invisible without historians and curators to sleuth it out or guard its memory.

These humble chairs and counter, once part of the Woolworth’s luncheonette in Greensboro, N.C., became a stage for an important scene in the civil rights movement when four African American college students sat down in them on February 1, 1960. The students asked to be served – a direct challenge to the store’s custom of refusing counter service to non-whites (they were allowed to order food to go, but not welcome to eat there).

They didn’t get served, but they didn’t leave, either. They stayed until closing, and came back in greater numbers the next day. And the next. The student-led “sit-in” protest ultimately lasted nearly six months, until it hurt the store’s bottom line so much that the manager finally relented and decided to begin serving African Americans. The sit-in attracted hundreds of supporters, harassers and (most importantly) journalists, and is now considered a milestone in the American civil rights movement.

Last week, at an informal “curator’s talk” in front of the lunch counter exhibit, Bill Yeingst, chair of the NMAH’s Home and Community Life Division, talked about how the lunch counter wound up in the Smithsonian’s collection.

Yeingst said he was home doing the dishes one day about 15 years ago, when he heard on the news that Woolworth’s was planning to close about 800 stores nationwide.

“That lunch counter had been in the back of my mind for a long time, and I thought, that would be a tremendous thing for the institution to have.”

Yeingst and his then-boss, Lonnie Bunch (now director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture), flew down to Greensboro and met with community leaders. Woolworth’s corporate headquarters said the museum could have part of the counter, but only if the Greensboro community approved. And it did.

Now, the lunch counter is a prominent part of American History’s permanent collection, typically displayed within view of the Star Spangled Banner to symbolize the central importance of the American civil rights movement.

“When you look back on your career, it’s one of those highlight moments. You feel like you’ve actually made a difference,” Yeingst said, smiling.

(Photograph courtesy of the National Museum of American History)

Last week we asked for help identifying a picture.

Let’s call it a Slight of Flight, space flight that is. The mystery image is of the heat shield from the Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia.

In 1969, Columbia carried astronauts Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins and Buzz Aldrin to the moon and back for their historic mission. The epoxy-resin ablative heat shield protected Columbia from the 5,000 °F temperatures during its reentry through Earth’s atmosphere.

The photograph was taken by the National Air and Space Museum’s photographer Carolyn Russo. Her new book and upcoming exhibition, In Plane View: Abstractions of Flight.

Russo uses fine art photography to bring out new visual dimensions of the iconic aircraft and spacecraft of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. Her unconventional approach reveals new layers of meaning from the whimsical to the profound in some of history’s most revered flying machines. The publication by powerHouse Books features a foreword by Patty Wagstaff and introduction and essays by Anne Collins Goodyear, assistant curator of prints and drawings at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery who specializes in the relationship of art, science, and technology.

I never really understood how colossal that behemoth plane, the 747, is until I stood next to the front landing gear and looked up. I was at the press conference for the opening of “America by Air,” a new exhibition opening Saturday at the National Air and Space Museum.

Hanging on the wall is some 36 feet of the front fuselage of a 747; the entire airplane is 231 feet long. You can also climb up several flights of stairs and take a peek into the cockpit. You can see the controls and the hundreds of instruments.

For such an incredibly huge airplane, it’s odd that it’s so cramped in there–smaller than my cubicle! Seating for the pilot, co-pilot and navigator is really tight. Sitting hour after hour in that tiny cockpit can’t be much of a joy ride.

So what’s up with that camelback hump on a 747?

Pan Am head Juan Trippe, a key customer for the 747, told Boeing, the manufacturer, that he doubted the aircraft would be commercially viable as a passenger plane. So he insisted that it be easily convertible to a cargo plane. That meant a nose that could be opened and closed on a top hinge. And a nose that would open and close would be an impossible place for the cockpit.

For one thing, having all the wiring and control cables between the cockpit and the plane bending back and forth as the nose opened and closed would have been a very bad idea. So the cockpit was put up behind the nose. To make room for the cockpit, and to keep the plane maximally aerodynamic, there had to be a hump. Later versions of the 747 extended the hump farther back and made room for more first-class seats.

As for why the camel has a hump? That’s another story.

(Courtesy of Eric Long/National Air and Space Museum)

Today marks the 40th anniversary of human-powered flight. On August 23, 1977, pilot Bryan Allen flew the Gossamer Condor (well, it seems he rather pedaled it) a momentous 7 minutes and 27.5 seconds over Shafter, California.

The 24-year-old pilot was a well-conditioned bicycle racer. And the pedals drove a bicycle chain that turned a propeller. The contraption, which has a 96-foot wingspan and is made mostly out of Mylar, cardboard and Styrofoam, traveled a total of 1.35 miles and won a $14,000 prize for its Pasedena designers Paul MacCready and Peter Lissaman.

The Gossamer Condor now hangs out with the Wright Brother’s first airplane and the Apollo 11 space capsule at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

(Courtesy of Eric Long)