“Atomic Dragons” at Pitzer Art Galleries captures the way intense feelings about the Cold War continue to ricochet across generations.
The exhibition features artwork from members of SWANS (Slow War Against the Nuclear State). Formed in 2022, SWANS is an intergenerational collective that uses art and other mediums to protest nuclear proliferation and support those affected by it. Their artwork as a whole has the collaborative aim of disrupting dominant narratives that claim the threat of nuclear weapons is a concern of the past.
I visited the exhibition as a part of the Contemporary Curatorial Practice course taught by Professor and Gallery Director Emily Butts at Pitzer College. Our discussions and readings were informative, but did little to prepare me for what I encountered in Pitzer’s art galleries. We first entered Nichols gallery, where I was immediately confronted by so many stories. One artist who instantly captured me was Judith Dancoff.
Judith Dancoff is a writer, artist and professor. Her work centers around her estranged relationship with her father, an early nuclear physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project. He died in 1951 from radiation-induced cancer around Dancoff’s fourth birthday.
We had read her article, “My Father, the Atomic Bomb,” before we entered the exhibition. She discussed in the article what her life — and the lives of many others — could have been like if her father had not worked on the atomic bomb. Near the end, she comes to understand her father’s choices and also grapples with the choices she has made as a result of his legacy.
In Nicholas gallery, Dancoff’s work “The Milk Pathway” uses milk bottles to symbolize the toll this history has had on her and many others. The piece features glass bottles of milk standing up in what looks like a 40s era briefcase; the bottom of the case is green and scattered with figurines of cows and people
These are not ordinary bottles of milk. During the Cold War, radioactive fallout would land on the grass eaten by cows near nuclear testing sites, which would make its way into their milk. Children who drank this milk were at high risk of developing thyroid cancer. Judith Dancoff was one of these children. The milk bottles tower over the tiny figurines, emphasizing their outsized impact.
This piece additionally features a screen next to the sculpture. On this screen, Dancoff describes her personal experience with thyroid disease. The way she talks about her symptoms and the impact they have had on her daily life is devastating to hear. With this piece, Dancoff blurs the line between art and artist: Her testimony becomes a crucial part of experiencing the artwork.
Dancoff’s piece, “The Dancoff Factor,” left me with a very heavy feeling that I still cannot shake. This piece is Dancoff’s personal archive, ranging from a box of crayons to letters between her father and J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Reading the letters between Sidney Dancoff and J. Robert Oppenheimer is a chilling experience. Sidney Dancoff’s letter shows how completely he admired Oppenheimer and the project. He describes how Oppenheimer had been such an important influence on the lives of so many and minimizes the impact of his own radiation symptoms, even characterizing them as a distraction that took him away from his work. Dancoff’s letters are handwritten, adding to the feelings of intimacy and common humanity that arise while looking at this piece.
Oppenheimer’s response letter is typed and relatively short compared to Dancoff’s. He also brushes off the symptoms, saying that they just come with the job, and he claims that he had been feeling distracted himself. These letters are a fascinating window into their relationship with each other and their work — work that killed them slowly, and destroyed the lives of many across the world.
Next to the letters, Dancoff places a box of crayons that she threw at Oppenheimer’s head when he came to visit her father in treatment. The box of crayons represents her anger at Oppenheimer, whom she felt was responsible for her father slipping away. Looking at the exhibit, a mish-mash of objects transformed into living testimony, it felt like I was invading a private moment between Dancoff, Oppenheimer and her father.
Of all the objects in this piece, the drawing placed behind the box of crayons elicited the most visceral reaction in me. As Dancoff revealed in her article, the last memory she has of her father’s face is from a dream she had when she was only eight years old. Her drawing depicts an internal image of her father, which stands in contrast to the portrait of him sitting next to it. This juxtaposition is not something you would typically see in an archive at a library or museum. Its casual nature is part of what makes it feel so much more special: It tells the story of a girl and her father, while simultaneously illustrating the tensions at the heart of a worldwide nuclear arms race.
Atomic Dragons presents these stories not just as fragments of the past, but as events that continue to affect the lives of many. Dancoff’s work and the work of many other artists in this exhibition humanize these effects.
Although this exhibition is coming to a close, it’s important we continue the conversations about the impacts of nuclear warfare that Atomic Habits created space for. We must continue to listen to these stories and work to truly understand them: Without doing so, we risk repeating previous mistakes that will continue to ripple through future generations.
Meiya Rollins PO ’29 believes, like Michelangelo, that art takes time – most of that time being snack breaks and watching “Good Mythical Morning.”
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