CRITICAL MASS

Los Alamos, New Mexico: Meridel Rubenstein, 1995. No. 3 OF 25 COPIES. 615 x 510 mm. (24 1/4 x 20"). [2] leaves of text.
Original linen portfolio, with gray paper folder, cover with paper label, linen ribbon ties. Eight photocollage plates, numbered and signed in pencil on verso by Rubenstein, all with tissue guards. With pencilled signature and inscription: "For Arnold [Horwitch] with admiration and gratitude 7/15/95." ◆The tiniest bit of soiling to label on portfolio, otherwise in mint condition.

This is a very rare portfolio based on Rubenstein's photo/text/video installation "Critical Mass," created between 1989 and 1993 in collaboration with Ellen Zweig, with technical assistance from Steina and Woody Vasulka. According to the Exhibition description at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, "The 50th anniversary of the atomic bomb, developed at the Los Alamos Laboratory and first detonated in the southern New Mexico desert on July 16, 1943, inspired artists Meridel Rubenstein, Woody and Steina Vasulka, and Ellen Zweig to probe the ironic juxtaposition of two very different elements of American society. 'Critical Mass,' a multimedia installation, examines the unusual meeting of J. Robert Oppenheimer and other Manhattan Project scientists with the American Indians of San Ildefonso Pueblo, whose land adjoins Los Alamos, New Mexico. Their worlds fused at 'the house at Otowi Bridge,' Edith Warner's Rio Grande riverside home where both groups patronized a small restaurant she operated during the 1940s." Born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1948, Rubenstein received her bachelor's degree in social science, with a film-making emphasis, from Sarah Lawrence College, and a Master's and M.F.A. degree from the University of New Mexico. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and has taught photography at San Francisco State University and the Institute of American Indian Arts. The New Mexico Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Smithsonian American Art Museum are among the institutions with her works in their collections. She currently lives and works in Santa Fe. Rubenstein inscribed our copy to its original owner, Arizona collector Arnold Horwitch. We could find no record of this item being offered or sold at auction..