Omar Juveland of the Community Relations (CRO) Office prepares paintings by Denver artist John Hull for hanging at the exhibit, "A Handful of Soldiers," slated to open Thursday afternoon at the Bradbury Science Museum. In many of his acrylic paintings, Hull depicted memories of V Site in World War II related by his father, McAllister Hull of the Special Engineering Detachment. Photo by LeRoy N. Sanchez, Public Affairs

V Site exhibit opens Thursday at Bradbury

The exhibition, produced by the Office of Cultural Affairs of the State Historic Preservation Division, features acrylic paintings on canvas and paper by painter John Hull, who is the chair of Visual Arts at the University of Colorado, Denver. He is the son of McAllister Hull, who worked in the Army's Special Engineering Detachment at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project.

Hull's artwork, painted in 1992, show workers casting powder for the explosives used in the first atomic bombs. He said of the paintings, "I have eschewed big events for the understated intervals that led up to those climaxes."

Also featured in the exhibit are photographs of V Site by some of the nation's best-known photographers, who were taken to the site in June 2000, after four of the six buildings at V Site were destroyed in the Cerro Grande Fire. They include Nathaniel Freeman, David Scheinbaum, Janet Russek, Joan Meyers and Meridel Rubenstein.

Instrumental in planning and preparing the exhibit were Ellen Bradbury of Recursos de Santa Fe; Elmo Baca, formerly with the State Historic Preservation Office; McAllister Hull, formerly with the Laboratory; John Isaacson of Ecology (RRES-ECO); Richard Moe, National Trust for Historic Preservation; Cindy Kelly of Save America's Treasures; and Estelle Zannes, video production. Omar Juveland of the museum was instrumental in bringing the exhibit to the museum.

The exhibit previously hung in the Governor's Gallery at the State Capitol Building in Santa Fe, from Dec. 21, 2000, to Jan. 18, 2002, and most recently at the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo.

The Bradbury Science Museum is part of the Community Relations (CRO) Office and is located at 15th Street and Central Avenue downtown.

For more information, contact Pat Berger of the museum at 5-0896.

-- Jim Danneskiold

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