The Museum of the Moon: a touring artwork travelling the globe

The Museum of the Moon: a touring artwork travelling the globe

Museum of the Moon, a travelling installation created by the artist Luke Jerram, consisting of nothing less than a reproduction of our most mysterious astronomical body.

The moon stands out for all of us, big and small… The natural satellite revolving around the earth that causes us to look up at the sky more than once on a clear night when it accompanies the starry sky. It was this strange admiration that got Luke Jerram thinking about the idea of creating the travelling Museum of the Moon. The British artist started to play with the idea about fifteen years ago, but it wasn’t until recently that NASA made the data available to create the images of the lunar surface.

The spherical sculpture measures seven metres in diameter with an approximate scale of 1:500.000, in other words, each centimetre represents 5km of the moon’s surface. The moon is also internally lit, so the public can see the 120dpi (dots per inch) NASA imagery of the moon’s surface.

The installation is a fusion of lunar images, moonlight and a surround sound composition created especially for the museum by Dan Jones, a BAFTA and Ivor Novello Award winning composer.

Since 2016, the Moon Museum has been travelling and exhibiting around the world in both indoor and outdoor locations with different musical compositions and the latest data on the world’s most fascinating natural satellite. Liverpool Cathedral, a swimming pool in Rennes, the gardens of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich Park, London, Bristol University and Azkuna Zentroa in Bilbao are just a few of the places on the planet where it’s been possible to catch a glimpse of this incredible artwork.

At the moment, the Moon is scheduled to continue its journey until April 2019, stopping off at iconic locations such as the Beijing National Aquatic Centre (until October 7th), Lightpool Festival in Blackpool (UK), October 18-28, Lumo Light Festival in Finland (November 23-30), Essen Light Festival in Germany (October 26th to November 4th) and the Melbourne Science Museum (December 1st, 2018 to April 28th, 2019).