Tag Archives: Robert McCall

Remembering Robert McCall

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One of my first major projects as a young exhibition designer at the National Air and Space Museum was planning a one-man show for the Museum’s Flight and the Arts gallery, called simply “The Art of Robert McCall.” The Museum owned several McCalls, in addition to the great mural in the lobby, but we needed a few more to fill Flight and the Arts. So, in the summer of 1984 I flew to Scottsdale, Arizona, where I was welcomed into the McCall home by Bob’s lovely wife Louise.

Mary and Barb

Mary Henderson and Barbara Brennan installing “The Art of Robert McCall" in 1984.

Bob was out of town that week, but Louise, also an artist, assured me that he trusted us to select the right works from the many available. It was an honor to have access to Bob’s studio and difficult to remain focused on the task at hand—measuring and photographing works for the show—with so many distractions: works in progress that revealed his careful meticulous process, finished artwork stacked against the wall, and objects collected as models and inspiration for his space paintings.

When our work was finally done in Bob’s studio, Louise showed me her own beautiful watercolors of bright flowers and sun-drenched still-lifes. “Bob paints space, and I paint Earth,” she explained. We drove to see a stained glass window they had designed together for a chapel in Scottsdale. It was a perfect blend of their styles: an Earth- and space-scape, with her colorful flowers sprinkled across the bottom and his glowing stars in the heaven above. I basked in the glow of their great talent, their love for each other, and their commitment to their art, and I thought, what a remarkable couple they are.

Bob McCall

Robert McCall working on The Space Mural -- A Cosmic View, in 1976, before the opening of the National Air and Space Museum.

Bob’s show ran from September 1984 to August 1985, and I saw Louise and him several more times throughout that year and off and on for decades during their frequent visits to the Museum. They always greeted me warmly, like an old friend. In my 30 years at the Museum, I have seen millions of visitors of every age and nationality pose to have their pictures taken in front of the huge astronaut figure in Bob McCall’s mural in the lobby. It makes me happy to think that his work is in photo albums around the globe, associated with fond vacation memories. I send my heartfelt condolences to Louise and the McCall family and thank them for my own fond memories of knowing Bob and Louise McCall.

Barbara Brennan is Chair of Exhibits Design at the National Air and Space Museum.

Robert McCall (1919-2010)

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A Cosmic View Detail

A study for Robert T. McCall's The Space Mural -- A Cosmic View in the South Lobby.

The nation lost an inspirational figure when Bob McCall died on Friday, February 26. As an artist, Bob invited people around the globe to share his optimistic dreams of a human future in space. A native of Columbus, Ohio and a graduate of the Columbus School of Fine Arts, McCall came out of the Army Air Forces at the end of WW II and established himself as a successful advertising illustrator with a number of magazine covers to his credit. But it was the notion of flying through air and space that truly inspired him. Beginning in the 1950s, he produced over forty works for the U.S. Air Force art collection. When James Webb, administrator of NASA, created an agency art program in the 1960s, Bob McCall was one of the first artists invited to participate. He became a favorite with Hollywood, as well, producing major paintings and posters for films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Tora, Tora, Tora.

Tora Tora Tora

Concept paintings by Robert T. McCall for the 1970 20th Centruy Fox motion picture Tora! Tora! Tora! hang in the World War II Aviation gallery entrance. This one depicts the Japanese fleet en route to its attack on Pearl Harbor.

McCall was perhaps best known for his murals. The Space Mural — A Cosmic View (1976), which he painted on a south lobby wall of the National Air and Space Museum, is perhaps the best known of all of his works. It was the first of several major murals that McCall produced for other museums and NASA facilities. In addition, his paintings appeared on a dozen U.S. postage stamps commemorating space feats. “There’s a great pleasure in designing something so many people are collecting,” he once remarked. “My art may fade into oblivion, but the stamps and murals will last.”

A Cosmic View

A study for Robert T. McCall's The Space mural -- A Cosmic View in the South Lobby.

Lester Cooke, curator of painting at the National Gallery of Art, once noted that Bob McCall had “…the quality and scope of imagination to travel in space, and carry us along with him.” Without artists like McCall, he explained, events in space which ordinary citizens could not see or experience “…would remain in the realm of words, mathematical formulae and electronic signals.” There was no danger of that, as long as Bob McCall was around.

A Cosmic View

Many visitors stop to have their photo taken in front of McCall's The Space Mural -- A Cosmic View when visiting the National Air and Space Museum on the National Mall. Photo by Eric Long.

Tom Crouch is Senior Curator for Aeronautics at the National Air and Space Museum.