The exhibition was organized around six themes which together painted a multifaceted portrait of the Moon and its significance in modern culture. Read about all the themes — Moonlight, Selenography, The Moon of Myth, The Moon Landing, The Colonization of Space and Deep Time — below.

MOONLIGHT
The distinctive light of the Moon has fascinated visual artists for centuries, and is a fundamental motif in the landscape painting and poetry of Romanticism. For painters like C.D. Friedrich, Joseph Wright of Derby, J.C. Dahl and C.W. Eckersberg, the frailty of human life is contrasted with the Moon’s eternal light. In contemporary art too, moonlight is thematized by artists like Katie Paterson and Darren Almond as an experience of nature that is disappearing with the increasing contamination from artificial light.

SELENOGRAPHY
The scientific description of the Moon’s surface – called after the Greek moon goddess Selene – arose at the beginning of the seventeenth century when the Italian Galileo Galilei studied the moon through a telescope and published his discoveries. One room in the exhibition tells the story of the mapping of the Moon—with a selection of items that ranges from Galileo’s original watercolours over the beautiful handmade maps of the 1700s to the very newest minutely detailed images of the Moon’s surface published by NASA.

THE MOON OF MYTH
The Moon is the object of scientific study, but it is also above all the domain of the imagination. This thematic section explores the moon of myth in a dialogue of moon-gods, folklore, urban myths and the surrealistic art of among others Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Joseph Cornell and Remedios Varo. Younger artists too, such as Marie Kølbæk Iversen and Camille Henrot, investigate the role of the Moon as a point of intersection between inner and outer space.

THE MOON LANDING
In the years around the first manned moon landing in 1969 the race for the Moon dominated the cultural agenda as its philosophical implications exercised the great artists of the period – with equal proportions of optimism about progress and ideological critique. Among other things we show Robert Rauschenberg’s works from his time at NASA, the Austrian Kiki Kogelnik’s paintings of women floating in outer space, and the Frenchman Yves Klein’s “planetary reliefs”.

THE COLONIZATION OF SPACE
Who owns the Moon? Although a UN treaty defines outer space as the common property of mankind, today were are seeing the contours of a new space age. The Moon is no longer just a goal in itself, but a launching platform for missions farther out into the universe, and nations and private corporations are both exploring the possibility of moonbases and mining activities in outer space. In this section we look at the colonization of space through among other things Foster+Partners’ moonbase for ESA, Neri Oxman’s experimental space suits and the artist Trevor Paglen’s photographs of the secret spy satellites that hide among the stars of the night sky.

DEEP TIME
The ecological crisis on Earth has led researchers to the conclusion that we are now in a new geological age, “the Anthropocene”, in which humans influence the Earth on a planetary scale. How can art capture the time of the planet, the deep time that transcends human comprehension? In this section we show among other things artist Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photographs, which track the orbit of the Moon as a band of light across the night sky, and Alicja Kwade’s abstract sculptures, which translate motifs such as gravity fields and planetary orbits into stone and steel.

From Casper David Friedrich and Joseph Wright of Derby to Salvador Dalí, Yves Klein and onwards to a.o. Darren Almond, Alicja Kwade and Hito Steyerl. From moonlight images of romanticism to surrealist fantasies, space age-design, contemporary art and works created for the exhibitions such as an interactive astronaut personality test by Danish film director Michael Madsen and a virtual reality installation by American avantgarde artist Laurie Anderson. For the full overview of the artists that were represented in the exhibition please see below.

Gertrude Abercrombie, US, 1909-1977 / Darren Almond, GB, 1971 / Laurie Anderson & Hsin-Chien Huang, US, 1947 & TW, 1966 / Galina Balashova, RU, 1931 / Rosa Barba, DE/IT, 1972 / Nanna Debois Buhl, DK, 1975 / James Carpenter, GB, 1840-1899 / Joseph Cornell, US, 1903-1972 / Donato Creti, IT, 1671-1749 / J.C. Dahl, NO, 1788-1857 / Salvador Dalí, SP, 1904-1989 / Joseph Wright of Derby, GB, 1734-1797 / Marlene Dumas, SA, 1953 / Charles and Ray Eames, US, 1907-1978 & 1912-1988 / C.W. Eckersberg, DK, 1783-1853 / Max Ernst, DE, 1891-1976 / Foster & Partners, GB / Caspar David Friedrich, DE, 1744-1840 / Isa Genzken, DE, 1948 / Richard Hamilton, GB, 1922-2011 / Camille Henrot, FR, 1978 / Marie Kølbæk Iversen, DK, 1981 / Yves Klein, FR, 1928-1962 / Kiki Kogelnik, AT, 1935-1987 / Stanley Kubrick, US, 1928-1999 / Alicja Kwade, DE, 1979 / Cath Le Couteur, UK / Carl Julius von Leypold, DE, 1928-1862 / Michael Madsen & Jonathan Houser, DK, 1971 & 1986 / George Méliès, FR, 1928-1962 / Edvard Munch, NO, 1863-1944 / James Nasmyth, GB, 1808-1890 / James Arthur O’Connor, IE, 1792-1841 / Yasuaki Onishi, JP, 1979 / Neri Oxman, US/IL, 1976 / Wolfgang Paalen, DE/AT/ME, 1905-1959 / Trevor Paglen, US, 1974 / Katie Paterson, UK, 1981 / Victor Prouvé, FR, 1858-1943 / Robert Rauschenberg, US, 1925-2080 / Man Ray, US, 1890-1976 / Rachel Rose, US, 1986 / Mark Rothko, US, 1890-1976 / Rotraut, DE/FR, 1938 / Tom Sachs, US, 1966 / Kiki Smith, US, 1954 / Hito Steyerl, DE, 1966 / August Strindberg, SE, 1848-1912 / Hiroshi Sugimoto, JP, 1948 / Malena Szlam, CL, 1979 / SEArch & CLOUDS Architecture Office / Remedios Varo, SP, 1908-1963ndberg, SE, 1848-1912 / Hiroshi Sugimoto, JP, 1948 / Malena Szlam, CL, 1979 / SEArch & CLOUDS Architecture Office / Remedios Varo, SP, 1908-1963