South Middlesex Times

Nanette Fluhr’s artwork has been featured in museums and galleries throughout the world and now a few of her pieces will be preserved on the moon.

Fluhr’s portrait of her son as a young baseball player was among a collection of digitized artwork sent to the moon on Feb. 22 as part of Lunar Codex project in conjunction with NASA. The project, brainchild of Canadian physicist and author Samuel Peralta, aims to curate and send works of artists around the world aboard space capsules. Speaking about the project, Peralta said, “The Codex is a message-in-a-bottle to the future, so that travelers who find these time capsules might discover some of the richness of our world today.”

Among the 175,000 to 210,000 pieces of art, music, poetry, books, film, and television representing 35,000 artists from around the world, Fluhr, a Rutgers College alumna, will have 11 of her works on the spacecrafts in the form of microfiche. Reflecting on this opportunity, Fluhr expressed, “It's just a thrill... It’s especially meaningful to me to have my art permanently there.”

In a historic moment, the Feb. 22 landing of the unmanned Codex Nova space capsule marked the first time women artists are represented on the moon. Fluhr shared her pride, stating, “This is the first time that women artists are represented on the moon, and I'm honored to be one of them.”

Fluhr’s 11-piece collection selected for the moon covers her work spanning 30 years, from 1993 to 2023. The selected pieces hold personal significance for Fluhr, such as the portrait of her grandfather sketched in 1993 which she described as her breakthrough piece. She expressed her joy that a piece of her grandfather will be preserved alongside her other works on the moon.

Speaking about her role as a portrait artist, Fluhr highlighted the importance of preserving family legacies while emphasizing the broader significance of Lunar Codex in preserving humankind’s creativity. She stated, “Art is a visual language... It lifts us and it’s our shared humanity.”