When telepathic aliens in zero-carbon-footprint space ships happen upon whatever remains of homo sapiens in the next millennium, one of their oddest encounters might be with a postage stamp-sized ceramic chip on the moon. The so-called Moon Museum (pictured) takes the form of a wafer-thin tile imprinted with drawings by famed artists Robert Rauschenberg, David Novros, Claes Oldenburg, Forrest Myers, John Chamberlain and Andy Warhol, reproduced in an edition of up to 20.
A miniature exhibition featuring one of the tiles—owned by Tampa-based collector and independent curator Jade Dellinger—lands at the Tampa Museum of Art. According to Myers, the artist who organized the project, in 1969 a rogue engineer smuggled a copy of the tile onto moon-bound Apollo 12’s landing module (which remains on the lunar surface today). Whether this modern legend is true—the question behind a recent episode of PBS series History Detectives featuring Dellinger—remains a mystery. On display through Aug. 1, Tampa Museum of Art, 120 W. Gasparilla Plaza, Tampa, tampamuseum.org. —Megan Voeller
This article appears in Jun 24-30, 2010.