What is the point of an art gallery on the Moon?

Market-centric space-tech outfits like Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines, OrbitBeyond and Masten Space Systems meet the lunar need. They build moon machines that are remarkably ugly. Unlike sleek sci-fi rocket ships, they look like solar-powered aluminium crates on stilts. But, like with a grocery cart, there’s always a little spare room inside. As a tech entrepreneur himself, Peralta befriended the upstart space merchants. His approach was persistent and practical. He quietly bought small, patchworked niches of unused lunar spacecraft. He refined the miniaturisation techniques. He invited curatorial friends, and friends of his curatorial friends, to find artistic material suitable for the time and the venue.

He financed it all personally. Since he provided free Moon storage as an act of curatorial noblesse oblige, soon he had thousands of artists following worldwide. They provided Peralta with heaps of art-filled brochures and catalogues, ready to be copied and shrunk to fit. Then the project launched for the Moon. It landed, repeatedly, on different lunar areas of the Moon, carrying art content. One of the launches failed. The entire tiny art gallery was vaporised on re-entry. But that was no great cultural loss. On the contrary – since it’s digital, you can back it up, and there’s plenty more. It’s become trendy. The pace of lunar art is accelerating. Along with Peralta’s chosen artworks, the Moon now boasts two editions of the vast Lunar Library, from the busy Billion-Year Archive. Moon-shipping vendors appeared, who will offer to ship authors’ vanity books direct to the Moon, for a very reasonable 75 dollars.