%0 Journal Article %T Cosmonauts: Birth of an Exhibition %A Doug Millard %D 2016 %V Special Issue: Science Museums and Research %N Spring 2016 %K Cosmonauts %K Cultural %K Korolev %K Russia %K Science Museum %K Space exploration %K Spacecraft %K Vostok %X %Z Russian Space Exhibition, Science Museum 2013, Draft proposal and preliminary object list, October 4th, 2011, Doug Millard, Senior Curator, ICT & Space Technology, Science Museum. Note: the initial target year of opening was delayed by two years from 2013 to 2015. %Z Ibid. %Z Ibid. %Z Ibid, p 179 %Z See, for example, Gerovitch, S, 2014, Voices of the Soviet Space Program: Cosmonauts, Soldiers and Engineers Who Took the USSR into Space, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan) and Chertok, B, 2005-11, Rockets and People, 4 vols, The NASA History Series (Washington DC: NASA History Division). %Z See also Maurer, Eva et al (eds), 2011, Soviet Space Culture: Cosmic Enthusiasm in Socialist Societies, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). %Z ‘Science’ as a term speaks also, in this instance, for engineering and technology. See, 2011, Strategic Ambitions 2011–12, Science Museum, p 2 %Z ‘These objects, some carrying with them the harsh, unforgiving evidence of space travel, will be powerfully evocative and inspirational, imbuing the exhibition with historical and personal potency.’ Russian Space Exhibition, Science Museum 2013, Draft proposal and preliminary object list, October 4th, 2011, Doug Millard, Senior Curator, ICT & Space Technology, Science Museum. %Z Astronomy and Space Technology are discrete Science Museum collections, the latter created in the 1960s; the former to the nineteenth century. The first Museum display addressing the physical exploration of space was ‘International Geophysical Year’ (1957). %Z The 2009 visit was my second visit to Russia for the Museum. The first, in 1995, was as Museum representative accompanying the prize winner and friends of a competition organised by the Museum’s shop. The trip included visits to many of the locations subsequently inspected as part of the Cosmonauts project almost two decades later but was not part of any attempt to bring Soviet spacecraft to London (c.f. Blatchford, Ian and Sidlina, Natalia, 11.02.15, ‘The Cosmonauts Challenge’, Science Museum Group Journal, p 4). See also Millard, Doug, book review of Siddiqi, Asif, 2010, ‘The Red Rockets’ Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination 1857–1957, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), in The Aerospace Professional, November 2011, p 25. %Z Georgi Krutikov, ‘Future City’ diploma, ‘On Air Lines’ transportation unit, and ‘Labour Commune’ residential complex (1928) %Z ‘Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1933) [sic], a Russian school teacher, made the earliest theoretical studies of spaceflight.’, a fleeting reference to Tsiolkovsky in the Exploration of Space Gallery’s accompanying booklet, The Exploration of Space, 1986, (London: Science Museum), p 3 %Z Maschinenmensch or ‘machine-human’ is the golden-coloured character in Fritz Lang’s 1927 adaptation of Thea von Harbou’s dystopia Metropolis. %Z Ilya Kabakov, The Man Who Flew into Space from His Apartment (1984), an installation representing an absent Soviet citizen who has flung himself into space, through a breach in the ceiling of his cramped, propaganda-clad apartment. %Z The Pale Blue Dot was a description coined by the scientists of NASA’s Voyager programme when looking at the tiny image of Earth – a pale blue dot – set against an expanse of space that had been returned by the cameras of the Voyager spacecraft on its way out of the Solar System. Astronomer Carl Sagan dwelt on the deeper significances that might be read into these few pixels of planet Earth. %I The Science Museum Group %@ 2054-5770 %B eng %U https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/cosmonauts-birth-of-an-exhibition/ %J Science Museum Group Journal