A Convergence of Science and Art: Simpson-Middleman Paintings Featured in Boeing Advertisements from the 1950s

Abstract

By 1956, the Newark, New Jersey–based, art team of Marshall S. Simpson (1900–1958) and Roslynn E. Middleman (1929–2003) had produced a large and important series of abstract paintings that depicted various interpretations of space and the night sky. Eleven of these works were featured in employment advertisements placed over the next two years by the Boeing Airplane Company (now the Boeing Company) in Scientific American and elsewhere. Signed “Simpson-Middleman,” the paintings combined science, mathematics, and art into a single medium. Only one of the original works used by Boeing can now be located. This article tells for the first time the story of the unusual Simpson-Middleman art collaboration and the Boeing ad campaign, then documents in an illustrated checklist their paintings with related captions used in each of the seventeen Scientific American advertisements that incorporated them.