In 1963 Moore was invited by the University of Chicago to make a sculpture commemorating the first controlled nuclear chain reaction, which had been conducted at the university in 1942. Nuclear Energy was unveiled in 1967. This sculpture is a working model for Nuclear Energy. Moore intended it to suggest ‘a contained power and force’ appropriate to the subject.
The original location of Chicago Pile-1 is now the Henry Moore Nuclear Energy Sculpture Plaza on South Ellis Avenue on the University of Chicago campus. It is one of the most significant sites in the history of nuclear technology and where the majority of Start a Reaction’s artwork was staged.
The complex relationship of art to memorialization is as alive—and fraught—today as at any time in history. In this photographic study, Hugo Juarez reconsiders both the form and meaning of Henry Moore’s work commemorating the 25th anniversary of the first self-sustaining controlled nuclear reaction and installed in 1967 at the Chicago site of Enrico Fermi’s experiment.
They did not hesitate was a site-specific performance on August 7th, 2021, created and performed by MacArthur Fellow Eiko Otake.
A recent New York Times article explores the artwork of Athena LaTocha (BFA 1992) and highlights her newest projects, a 55-foot long installation at the BRIC House titled In the Wake of… and a companion piece showing in the Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) Greater New York exhibit. Working with natural elements such as lead, wood, and earth, LaTocha’s latest projects feature soil from Green-Wood Cemetery and imprints of Manhattan schist bedrock striated by glaciers, and she speaks about her deep dive into what shapes the terrain of New York City.
Lauren Bon has been at work "undeveloping" a Los Angeles River adjacent property, regenerating the soil to form a novel urban ecosystem. Four years into this work, her Metabolic Studio has created a self-generating and self-complicating urban haven best illustrated by the biological diversity that has re-emerged.
School of the Art Institute of Chicago Hosts Second Discussion in Toward an Anti-Racist Art Ecosystem Series on November 3
