Century after century , the moon adamantly refused to give up its secrets. The ancient Greeks and Romans generally considered it pristine, smooth and white, but did not have a good explanation for the dirty spots on its face that were visible to human eyes. Then, around 90 A.D., Plutarch wrote that those blemishes were the shadows of mountains and valleys and that the moon must be habitable.

By no means did everyone agree, but ignorance is seldom bliss. Faced with an unanswerable question, our species generally comes up with theories, guesses, myths and fantasies. Telescopes made viewing more precise, and photography did even better, but though no living creatures showed up, the notion that they might would not die. After World War II, one of several rumors was that the Germans had established a secret facility on the moon, and some even speculated that Hitler had faked his own death and lived out his days beneath the lunar surface.

A new exhibition, “Apollo’s Muse: The Moon in the Age of Photography,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a journey through an uncommon history, the history of representations of the moon across four centuries. This outsize and beautifully installed revelation of persistent astronomical searches is a trailblazing marriage of science and art — 300 images and objects (a telescope, a photograph used as a fire screen, two moon globes, Hasselblad cameras used by astronauts), plus film excerpts. The images shine a bright light on astronomers’ unstoppable pursuit of knowledge as well as on technological advances, artistic responses and fantasy, and also a generous serving of unabashed cuteness. The show amounts to a testament to the human drive to know and explore, and it quietly affirms the growing influence of visual representations of the moon from the invention of the telescope through the first manned moon landing 50 years ago .