Bohr's Doubt (from the series Critical Mass)
Artist
Meridel Rubenstein
(American, born 1948)
Date1990
Mediumplatinum/palladium photographs
DimensionsSize of Box Object is In: 81 × 66 in. (205.7 × 167.6 cm)
Steel support: 80 × 66 × 1 3/4 in. (203.2 × 167.6 × 4.4 cm)
Steel support: 80 × 66 × 1 3/4 in. (203.2 × 167.6 × 4.4 cm)
ClassificationsPhotograph
Credit LineMuseum purchase with funds from Ann and Joel Berson, 2012
Object number2012.5
Description11 platinum palladium photographs on steel backing with stamped words “Bohr’s Doubt,” “Uncertainty Principle,” “paradox,” and “science.” Photographic images of landscapes, head and feet of man laying on ground, fighter jet, flying seagulls with corner of American flag, boy holding snake.Text Entries
Bohr’s Doubt is from Meridel Rubenstein’s series Critical Mass, which in the artist’s words looks at “the worlds of scientists and Native Americans as they intersected at the home of Edith Warner during the making of the first atomic bomb in 1944 in Los Alamos, New Mexico.” The artwork consists of 11 photographs on a steel backing with a plexiglas covering. Words such as “Bohr’s doubt,” “science,” “paradox’ and “uncertainty principle” are stamped into the steel. The title refers to Niel Bohrs, who in 1913 developed an early model of a hydrogen bomb, one that ultimately failed because Bohr misconceived of the electron moving circularly around the nucleus. Hence the “doubt” in the title. Nonetheless, Bohr’s is regarded as the theoretical precursor to what would become the first atomic bomb. “Doubt” might also refer to the sense of doubt and guilt felt by many atomic scientists after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Few scientists understood the larger picture of what their research would yield and felt great remorse at the scope of death caused by science. Images include the juxtaposition of flight by a fighter jet and birds; a figure lying in the landscape with the burden of a rock on his head (figure is artist Jerry West); a jail cell; Pueblo architecture; and a child carrying a snake to represent a second temptation.
On View
Not on view
circa 1970
