Gagarin, Bronze Bust

Object Details

Summary: This is a bronze bust of the first man to orbit the Earth, Yuri Gagarin. Born in a small village, west of Moscow just before World War II, Yuri Gagarin was a young Soviet Air Force pilot in 1959 when a special commission interviewed him to find out if he might be qualified to fly a "new type of aircraft." In a little over a year, on April 12, 1961, this young man climbed into a spherical capsule on top of a rocket derived from the German V-2 rockets. The rocket launched him into a single orbit of the Earth. With that flight, Gagarin fulfilled the centuries-old dreams of human spaceflight and became an international hero.; Russian artist, Aleksei Dmitrievich Leonov (no relationship to the cosmonaut) created this bust. There are several other castings of it throughout the world.; The Russian Embassy in Washington DC and the International Charitable Fund “Dialogue of Cultures – United World” donated this one to the Air and Space Museum in 2016, on the occasion of the 55th anniversary of Gagarin's flight.

Credit Line: Gift of Embassy of Russia and the International Charitable Fund “Dialogue of Cultures – United World”

Medium: Gagarin, Bronze Bust
Dimensions: Overall: 58 × 56 × 40cm, 50kg (1 ft. 10 13/16 in. × 1 ft. 10 1/16 in. × 1 ft. 3 3/4 in., 110.2lb.)

National Air and Space Museum

GUID (Link to Original Record): http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/nv9b010fa40-772e-4f3a-ab88-2b8169b7eacd