Press Release

Calling Will Robinson! New Exhibition at SFO is Out of This World!

09/29/2008

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACT: Jane Sullivan   
Manager, Marketing and Communications 
(650) 821-5123
SF-08-50

 

Calling Will Robinson!  New Exhibition at SFO is Out of This World!
The Twentieth-Century Space Invasion of American Pop Culture Comes to Terminal 3

 

SAN FRANCISCO -- SFO launches into the stratosphere with a new exhibition that explores how America’s collective infatuation with space during the early to mid-twentieth century resulted in products from the fantastically silly to the truly visionary - objects that may have inspired the conquest of space as much as they reflected it.

 

Out of this World! The Twentieth-Century Space Invasion of American Pop Culture features more than 300 space-themed objects from the 1930s through the 1980s, from children’s toys such as flying saucers, space guns, rocket ships and robots, to everyday household objects like air fresheners, sewing needles and packaged foods. 

 

Through the objects on view, the exhibition traces the evolving notion of space exploration beginning with the vast range of fanciful concepts in the early twentieth century; to the 1950s when space conquered all means of production including toy manufacturers, movie studios, the recording industry, publishing houses, and television; to the 1960s when advancements in the Soviet and American space programs were reflected in more realistic toy and product designs. 

 

Out of this World! also includes four sculptures by artist and collector Clayton Bailey. Inspired by his collection of tin-toy robots, Bailey began making life-sized versions from metal in 1975. Bailey selects his material from a variety of objects found at local flea markets and scrap-metal depots - cookware, vacuum cleaners, bicycles, automobiles, and a variety of home appliances - and reassembles them to create new forms with undeniably distinct personalities.

 

Out of this World! The Twentieth-Century Space Invasion of American Pop Culture is on view in Terminal 3 through March 14, 2009. The exhibition is located post-security and accessible only to passengers ticketed through Terminal 3.

 

Images from the exhibition are available online at: http://www.flysfo.com/web/page/about/news/pressres/exh-space.html.

 

San Francisco Airport Museums

The San Francisco Airport Museums program was established by the Airport Commission in 1980 for the purposes of humanizing the Airport environment, providing visibility for the unique cultural life of San Francisco, and providing educational services for the traveling public. The Museum was granted initial accreditation from the American Association of Museums in 1999, reaccredited in 2005, and has the distinction of being the only accredited museum in an airport. Today, the San Francisco Airport Museums features approximately twenty galleries throughout the Airport terminals displaying a rotating schedule of art, history, science, and cultural exhibitions, as well as the San Francisco Airport Commission Aviation Library and Louis A. Turpen Aviation Museum, a permanent collection dedicated to the history of commercial aviation.

  

S-F-O

 

About San Francisco International Airport

SFO (www.flysfo.com) offers non-stop links with more than 30 international points on 26 international carriers. The Bay Area's Airport of Choice connects non-stop with more than 65 cities in the United States on 21 domestic airlines, including more than six times as many non-stop flights to the New York area than the other Bay Area airports combined.