First Curated Artists’ Book Heading to the Moon An international collection of work by visual artists, photographers, poets and writers is scheduled to land near the lunar South Pole in 2026. These artworks are collected in a micro-sized hand-bound artists’ book titled Moon Bound. The book asked its contributors to create works in response to the question, “How does the Moon see the Earth?” The responses range from poetry to manifestos, from manipulated photography to small essays. The book contains 49 contributions including images, poetry and prose pieces in seven languages. The artists include the well-known, such as science-fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson and visual artist  Eduardo Kac, to emerging poets and artists such as Julie Swarstad Johnson to Yana Karol. The book is just 1 cubic cm in size—about as wide as finger-nail. Enabled by the Netherlands-based non-profit Moon Gallery Foundation, the book is encased in a container designed by LifeShip, a company devoted to sending terrestrial materials such as art and seeds, to space. Contributors were selected competitively and did not pay for their pieces to be included. LifeShip obtained dedicated space for Moon Bound and other objects on Astrolab’s FLIP Rover. This small rover is intended to test technologies such as avionics and wheels for later, more complex rovers. It will be carried by Astrobotic’s Griffin lander. The lunar South Pole is the object of intense interest because of the discovery of likely substantial reserves of water ice, which can be studied as an archive of solar-system history and can be processed into water, air and rocket fuel.  The launch window is not specifically set but is planned to take place later this year. This intersection of art, science and (hopefully sustainable) commerce is at the heart of many of the contributions to Moon Bound. “The contributors are aware of and investigating these cross currents of hope and justice and curiosity in the context of space exploration, a context that inevitably involves businesses,” says project organizer Anna Sitnikova, an Amsterdam-based interior architect and Moon Gallery co-founder. “There are no easy answers but we all agree on the need to extend culture to space in ways that represent all of us. The book is on the leading edge of this effort.” Moon Bound will be the first purpose-made physical book to be delivered to the Moon. The only other physical book on the lunar surface is a Bible left by Apollo 15’s Dave Scott, who placed it on that mission’s lunar rover before he and James Irwin departed. It will also be the physical first artists-and-writers anthology book sent to the Moon.  According to lead editor Barbara Brownie, a researcher at the Royal College of the Arts in London, “Through the launch of Moon Bound, we seek to promote discussion of larger questions about the relationship between the arts and aerospace sectors, the value of artists’ engagements with space exploration, and what it means for humankind that human culture now extends beyond the Earth.” “We wanted a diverse range of voices,” says Moon Gallery co-founder Elizaveta Glukhova based in Stuttgart, Germany. “The opportunity to fly an arts payload came up rather suddenly. But we put together a great team and an amazing set of contributions.” Joining them in organizing this international collaboration were assistant texts editor Christopher Cokinos, a U.S.-based poet and science writer and former English professor, and artist- curator Luis Bernardo Guzmán, who is a PhD candidate at Northumbria University Newcastle where he works on intersections of art, space and technology. The Netherlands-based graphic design studio Figure Ten consisting of Joanne van der Wal and Annegien Schilling designed the tiny book layout, while U.S.-based artist Evan Lorenzen physically produced the book for the Moon rover. Moon Bound will join other art objects that have previously landed on the Moon, including the Fallen Astronaut sculpture by Paul Van Hoeydonck (1971, left by Apollo 15, along with a plaque of deceased space explorers) and Jeff Koons’s Moon Phases sculpture (2023) delivered by an Intuitive Machines lander. The Bereshet lander, which crashed, included a digital Arch Lunar Library of 30 million pages. Lunar Codex is an ongoing project using nanotechnology for space-bound art archival projects. Less well-known is the Lenin bas-relief on the Luna 21 rover. “Despite this legacy, no one has sent a physical book—an actual book--to the Moon on purpose,” says Cokinos. “And Moon Bound is not just any book. It’s an interrogation of that body’s relationships to us and vice-versa. It is a milestone not only in space and art but in literature.”  The team hopes for a variety of events and discussions around the project. For updates on the project, go to https://moongallery.eu/moon-bound-book/ . “It will be awhile before an astronaut can retrieve Moon Bound from the rover,” says Sitnikova, “but we will have slightly larger versions available to purchase here on Earth. We hope the book is read and its contents debated.” The Moon Gallery Foundation is an international cultural NGO, based in the Netherlands and dedicated to developing an ongoing program that brings art and space together with purpose and vision. It fosters questions and develops projects that lay the foundation for a future interplanetary humanity. The work includes artistic space missions, space-borne art projects, residencies, educational programs, and events. Through these initiatives, the foundation brings together artists, scientists, agencies, and industry to exchange knowledge, solve problems, and develop sustainable cultural practices. In 2022, the Moon Gallery launched an off-planet gallery aboard a Northrop Grumman Cygnus resupply mission to the International Space Station. The test mission of 65 artefacts was housed inside a Nanoracks Nanolab, together with a camera aimed at the gallery for targeted material observations in microgravity. The gallery had 65 artists and generated media attention from Space.com, Next Nature, Wild Alchemy Journal and elsewhere. While currently not on display, it spent nearly a year in space at the ISS.