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Celebrate the moon with the best films, books and festivals

The 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing is coming. In honour of that, here is the cream of the cultural highlights celebrating all things lunar
moon artwork
Museum of the Moon is a touring artwork measuring 7 metres across
“Trustees of the Natural History Museum 2019 (Dare & Hier Media)”

Mark Holborn has hurled himself at the universe with Sun and Moon, which tells the story of the human need to comprehend the universe, from the 5000-year-old Knowth Passage Tomb in County Meath, Ireland, (probably aligned with the sunrise and sunset during the spring and autumn equinoxes) to an awe-inspiring shot of the Endeavour crater on Mars, taken by NASA’s rover Opportunity in 2014.

But it is Holborn’s abiding devotion to lunar ephemera that distinguishes this volume: from James Nasmyth and James Carpenter’s handmade plaster models of the lunar surface to images from the NASA GRAIL mission in 2016, reflecting the gravitational perturbations generated when an impact 3.8 billion years ago produced the Moon’s Orientale basin. These and other curios make Sun and Moon a heavyweight delight.

Mark Holborn

Phaidon


A touring show on rocket science and space flight, with artefacts from the US and Soviet Union.

Queensland Museum, Australia

to 9 October


Award-winner Todd Douglas Miller has crafted a narrator-free account of the Apollo 11 mission, using previously unseen footage and a soundtrack played on period synthesisers. It is easy to see why it won an award at Sundance Film Festival. It is a masterpiece.

Directed by Todd Douglas Miller

In some cinemas from 28 June


Performances, lectures, films, food markets, gardens… Moon Festival promises to bring a little calm and wonder to the UK’s frenetic capital, as it celebrates not just Apollo 11, but the moon itself, “from the beginning of time to the unforeseeable future”.

, London

19-26 July


To open this year’s BBC Proms, Canadian pianist Zosha Di Castri was commissioned to create a new work, paying homage to the Apollo 11 mission. Using a text by Chinese-British novelist Xiaolu Guo, Long Is the Journey – Short Is the Memory evokes the moon across human history.

Royal Albert Hall, London

Friday 19 July, 7.30pm


Curators at London’s Royal Observatory Greenwich are coinciding this book with The Moon Exhibition at the National Maritime Museum nearby, which runs from 19 July. Accompanied by 180 images, The Moon shows how art and science meet to explore our favourite untapped resource.

Royal Observatory Greenwich

HarperCollins


Get close to the moon by visiting Luke Jerram’s giant installation. It is at the museum from 17 May, and at in October

Luke Jerram

Natural History Museum to 1 January 2020

Topics: Books / Exhibition / Film