Note to Correspondents

SWORDS INTO PLOWSHARES/TONY PRICE:  ATOMIC ART EXHIBITION

 

OF SCULPTURES OPENS AT UN HEADQUARTERS ON 5 MAY

 

An exhibition entitled “Swords into Plowshares” consisting of 20 sculptures by Tony Price (1937-2000), created from nuclear weapons salvage, will open in the south gallery of the General Assembly Visitors’ Lobby at 6 p.m. on Thursday, 5 May 2005.  This exhibit, originally displayed at the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is being presented in conjunction with the ongoing 2005 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons at the United Nations and in commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the United Nations.

Statements at the formal exhibit opening will be made by Nobuyasu Abe, Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs; Christopher G. Weeramantry, former Vice-President of the International Court of Justice; Gay Dillingham, Chairwoman of the New Mexico Environmental Improvement Board; Godfrey Reggio, filmmaker; and Rosé Cohen, poet.  Cora Weiss, President of Hague Appeal for Peace, will be master of ceremonies.  The opening event will also feature a special performance by composer and pianist Philip Glass and vocalist Patti Smith.

In the late 1960s, artist and counter-culture icon Tony Price settled in New Mexico and discovered the Zia Salvage Yard at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.  He was inspired to use the detritus of the world’s most advanced nuclear weapons programme to create an art that spoke to mankind’s deeper instinct for peace.  With grace, wit and brilliance, he fashioned the forms of nuclear destruction into icons of peace in an eloquent appeal for sanity and survival.  Out of the angry arsenals of terror, Mr. Price created weapons of mass salvation which he calls Atomic Art.

This exhibit was made possible by the Friends of Tony Price with the support of the New Agenda Coalition member nations, Sweden, Ireland, New Zealand, Mexico, South Africa and Egypt, and Governor and Mrs. Bill Richardson of New Mexico and the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs.

For additional information on the exhibit, contact James Rutherford at tel.: (615) 500-8099, or Rosé Cohen at tel.: (505) 231-7237, or visit the website at www.newartsweb.com/atomicartist.

For more information on United Nations exhibitions, call Jan Arnesen at tel.: (212) 963-8531, or Liza Wichmann at tel.: (212) 963-0089, or visit the website at www.un.org/events/UNART.

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