Nuclear Energy

from a sculpture on the University of Chicago campus

At 56th Street and South Ellis, Henry Moore's outdoor sculpture commemorates the first controlled nuclear reaction, conducted in 1942 by Enrico Fermi's team, aka the Manhattan Project. Los Alamos and Hiroshima are sites of more famous nuclear events, but doomsday is technically a Chicago export.

Then again, maybe the harnessing of atomic power should not necessarily connote mankind's incipient suicide. After all, nuclear energy provides affordable and environmentally friendly electricity to millions (except when it doesn't). And political brinksmanship has so far not resulted in a mass extinction.

Moore's abstract, sensuous bronze conveys the ambiguity of the highly volatile subject material. Viewers are likely to imagine a mushroom cloud, or a human skull. A less ominous interpretation suggests itself if you climb onto the smooth, two-foot wide flume on the west-facing side. It's steep enough and long enough for a person to slide down, and turn a foreboding symbol of death into a children's playground.