Henry Guimond’s Artemis II Patch Carries Anishinaabe Teachings Toward the Moon
A small embroidered patch, designed in Manitoba and rooted in Anishinaabe teachings, is set to travel farther than most artworks ever will. Henry Guimond, an Anishinaabe artist from Sagkeeng First Nation, has created a mission patch that Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen will wear on NASA’s Artemis II flight, the crewed mission slated to loop around the Moon.
Guimond’s design translates the Seven Sacred Laws into a compact image language meant to be read at a glance. The patch depicts seven symbolic animals, each tied to one of the teachings that, in Anishinaabe tradition, articulate an ethical relationship between people and the Earth. Speaking this week, Guimond framed the work as an invitation rather than a private emblem. “It’s good for everyone to learn those teachings, the seven laws for all humanity, not just for Indigenous people, but for all people,” he said.
The commission places Indigenous visual culture into a context that is both intensely contemporary and historically freighted: the renewed push for lunar exploration. Artemis II will carry Hansen and three NASA astronauts on a trajectory around the Moon, a high-profile step in the Artemis program’s broader aim of returning humans to the lunar surface. In that setting, the patch functions as more than a souvenir of participation. It becomes a portable statement about values, stewardship, and continuity, stitched into the iconography of spaceflight.
For Guimond, the prospect of his imagery leaving Earth’s orbit is part wonder, part quiet satisfaction. “It’s out of this world,” he said, a line that lands as both a pun and a genuine description of the patch’s destination.
The news arrives amid a week of institutional headlines that underscore how cultural meaning is increasingly shaped by infrastructure, leadership, and security as much as by exhibitions. In Florence, the Uffizi Galleries disclosed that it was targeted in a cyberattack on Feb. 1. The museum said no data was stolen and denied reports that hackers had emptied its servers, while acknowledging that the incident required additional time to restore backups. The Uffizi also said it has accelerated a security upgrade, including the replacement of surveillance cameras, noting that its system had been in the process of being updated from analog to digital.
In Paris, the Louvre is also entering a new phase. Sébastien Allard, director of the museum’s painting department and a figure associated with former Louvre president Laurence des Cars, is stepping down — a move widely read as an early signal of shifting priorities under the institution’s new leader, Christophe Leribault.
Taken together, the stories sketch a telling portrait of the art world’s present tense: artworks circulating in unexpected arenas, museums hardening their digital defenses, and major institutions recalibrating their internal power structures. Guimond’s patch, however, offers a different kind of headline — one in which cultural transmission is literal, carried on a sleeve toward the Moon, insisting that ancient teachings can still speak in the most futuristic of settings.
