Youngest

Located in the Charles Simonyi Space Gallery, an exhibit space dedicated to modern space exploration, you’ll find the youngest artifact in our collection: An American flag flown to space on the historic Blue Origin New Shepard NS-3 Launch. In today’s episode of the Flight Deck, we’ll take a look at the flag and it’s story, and also learn why stories are at the heart of any museum…and how the stories told in museums have changed over time.

This episode is Part 3 of a four-part miniseries exploring the extremes of The Museum of Flight’s Collection.

Part 1 showcased our smallest artifact. 

Part 2 investigated out biggest artifact. 

Part 4, coming soon, will look at our oldest artifact.

TEXT LINE: (206) 487-7090

Keyword: Repeat

As of the release date of this episode, The Museum of Flight continues to be closed to the public because of the COVID-19 epidemic. Visit https://museumofflight.org/ for the most up-to-date re-opening information. During your next visit, make sure to look next to the Spacequest VR experience to spot the Blue Origin Space-Flown American Flag.

Learn more about The Museum of Flight’s educational offerings for the summer here: https://www.museumofflight.org/Site/Education/Boeing-Academy-at-Home.aspx

Discover some of the efforts at the Field Museum to reframe their collection as they renovate their Native North American Hall here: https://www.fieldmuseum.org/blog/making-room-native-american-voices

For more background on the concept of museum decolonization, see this article from MuseumNext: https://www.museumnext.com/article/what-does-it-mean-to-decolonize-a-museum/

Producer: Sean Mobley

Webmaster: Layne Benofsky

Social Media Specialist: Tori Hunt