WASHINGTON, D.C.- Since 1998 Jim Sanborn has been building a comprehensive installation about the Manhattan Project and the origin of the U.S. nuclear weapons program. This installation, titled Critical Assembly, and a related series of photographs, Atomic Time, will be shown at the Corcoran Gallery of Art from November 1, 2003 through January 26, 2004.

Critical Assembly is both a recreation and an interpretation of the criticality experiments carried out at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico , from 1942 - 55. Sanborn began the project in 1998 by gathering original laboratory furniture, equipment and hardware from people formerly associated with the Manhattan Project, the name given to the U.S. government research project that produced the first atomic bombs. His sources include machinists, physicists and a variety of other workers from the Los Alamos area. To complete the installation Sanborn augmented his collection of original devices with additional hardware, assembled parts and furniture that he fabricated to match the vintage examples he had acquired. The finished work depicts the laboratory at Los Alamos as it might have existed in the 1940s and 1950s. The installation suggests a secret site of major discovery, remote, menacing and overwhelming in its implications. Lights on the electronic instruments glow and the sound of Geiger counters and images on oscilloscopes detect radioactive material. However, there are no dangerous materials present in the exhibition. 

Critical Assembly is a remarkable work of art that deifies classification by blurring distinctions between history and art, science and aesthetics. It stimulates a dialogue about the allure of pure science and the ethical dilemmas researchers have faced for decades. Critical Assembly demonstrates how the elegance and beauty of the tools and concepts of atomic science provided a seductive environment in which the scientists at Los Alamos, pulled by the juggernaut of discovery, found themselves at a major ethical crossroads. 

In addition to the installation Critical Assembly, Sanborn will show photographic images from his series Atomic Time, which he produced from 2001 - 02. Manmade nuclear materials are primarily derived from natural uranium. This radioactive ore is currently mined at hundreds of sites worldwide. However, in the 1940s, when the first atomic bomb was assembled, there were just a handful of uranium mines. Sanborn made his Atomic Time images in two ways. The first was by placing pieces of uranium collected from these early mines onto 4 x 5-inch sheet film. After approximately 3-½ weeks the ore samples photographed themselves using their own radioactivity to expose the film. The 30 x 36-inch images in the exhibition, called autoradiographs, are printed from the exposed sheet film. Though derived from an actual object, the images are completely abstract, revealing the formal beauty contained within the ore. The tonality of these images’ faceted forms is brightest where the uranium was most radioactively potent or where the ore touched the film. 

The second group of images from the Atomic Time series consists of an assortment of radium-dial alarm clocks made from 1920 - 50. At one time these clocks glowed in the dark, owing to the radium-rich paint with which they were made. While the faces no longer visibly glow, Sanborn discovered that he could make photographs of the faint dials by using a three-week exposure. The artist acquired these clocks in the Southwest from regions around the Trinity Site on the Jornado Del Muerto in New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb exploded. One might imagine that these alarm clocks sat on nightstands in homes near this explosion. On July 16, 1945, residents might have been awakened by the first atomic flash, an artificial sunrise, to see the time of day, 5:30, which all of the photographs depict. 

The images of the Atomic Time series are distinguished by an intense blue color, resembling cobalt blue. This color is similar to the true color of radioactivity, otherwise know as Cherenkov radiation, named after the Russian physicist Pavel Cherenkov who discovered it while experimenting with gamma rays in 1934. Sanborn achieved this color effect through his choice of photographic materials and refinements in his working process. 

The exhibition will be accompanied by an 96-page fully illustrated catalogue featuring an interview with the artist by curator Milena Kalinovska and essays by Barbara London, Associate Curator of Video and Media at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Howard Morland, activist and author of The Secret that Exploded; and Jonathan P. Binstock, the exhibition’s curator, who is Curator of Contemporary Art at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. The Corcoran is planning a two-year tour for this exhibition.  

While the exhibition is on view at the Corcoran, Jim Sanborn will be a visiting artist at the Institution’s College of Art + Design. An array of educational programs will be organized to coincide with the exhibition, including a slide talk and gallery tour with the artist, a panel discussion addressing issues related to the exhibition and visits by the artist to students’ studios.