🌙 A SPACE THEMED STAINED GLASS WINDOW!! 🌙
I repeat
A SPACE THEMED STAINED GLASS WINDOW!!!
Welcome to the Windows of Wonder series!!
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This OUT OF THIS WORLD window can be found in Washington D.C Cathedral and was commissioned by NASA!
Which, if you ask me, is very on brand! ;)
Quoting below:
“The Scientists and Technicians Window—better known as the Space Window—was installed in 1974.
It exists in large part due to Francis B. Sayre Jr., who served as the cathedral’s dean in the early 1970s. He had already made a reputation for himself as a progressive-minded clergyman by loudly opposing Joseph McCarthy and marching with Martin Luther King, Jr., at Selma. His hope was to give the cathedral a uniquely American work of art that would separate it from other great churches around the world.
Sayre teamed up with former NASA administrator Thomas O. Paine, who largely financed the window, to commission the St. Louis-based artist Rodney Winfield to commemorate the United States’ greatest scientific achievement: Apollo 11’s mission to the moon."
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Much like the mission it was commemorating, the window’s design process did not go smoothly. In fact, it took 12 different designs before everyone on the commissioning committee agreed.
The final design, which was selected, is the artist’s depiction showing the immensity of the universe.
The window was unveiled on the 5th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Mission.
And the best thing about the window?
It has a piece of moon rock embedded into it which was collected by Neil Armstrong himself!
HOWEVER – the window isn’t the star attraction of the Cathedral. It is actually its Darth Vader Gargoyle….swipe to the end see!
I love art history and all is amazingness!!!
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Jo McLaughlin
May 2021