Jim Sanborn (born 1945 in
Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C. , formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States, founded on July 16, 1790...
) is an American
sculptor, best known for creating the encrypted
KryptosKryptos is a sculpture by American artist Jim Sanborn located on the grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia, USA. Since its dedication on November 3, 1990, there has been much speculation about the meaning of the encrypted messages it bears...
sculpture at
CIAThe Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government.It is an independent agency responsible for providing national security intelligence to senior United States policymakers....
headquarters in
Langley, VirginiaLangley is an unincorporated community in the census-designated place of McLean in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States.The community was essentially absorbed into McLean many years ago, although there is still a Langley High School...
.
Sanborn's father was the head of exhibitions at the
Library of CongressThe Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress and is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and holds the largest number of books. The head...
, and his mother was a concert pianist and photo researcher. He grew up in
AlexandriaAlexandria is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 128,283. Located along the Western bank of the Potomac River, Alexandria is approximately 6 miles south of downtown Washington, D.C.Like the rest of northern Virginia, as...
and Arlington, Virginia, attending JEB Stuart High School in
FairfaxThis article refers to the independent city of Fairfax, Va. For the surrounding unincorporated area of Fairfax County with a Fairfax postal address, please see Fairfax County, Virginia...
, and then attended
Randolph-Macon CollegeRandolph-Macon College is a private, co-educational liberal arts college located in Ashland, Virginia, near the capital city of Richmond. Founded in 1830, the school has an enrollment of over 1,200 students....
, receiving a degree in
paleontologyPaleontology
[from Greek: παλαιός "old, ancient", ὄν, ὀντ- "being, creature", and λόγος "speech, thought"] is the study of prehistoric life, including organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments...
, fine arts, and
social anthropologySocial anthropology is the branch of anthropology that studies how currently living human beings behave in social groups. Practitioners of social anthropology investigate, often through long-term, intensive field studies , the social organization of a particular people: customs, economic and...
in 1968, followed by a
Master of Fine ArtsIn the United States, a Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring two to three years of study. In the United Kingdom, a typically requires two years, whereas a is usually one year of study....
degree in sculpture from the
Pratt InstitutePratt Institute is a specialized private college in New York City with campuses in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Utica, New York. Pratt is one of the leading art schools in the United States and offers programs in art, architecture, fashion design, illustration, interior design, digital arts, creative...
in 1971.
Jim Sanborn (born 1945 in
Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C. , formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States, founded on July 16, 1790...
) is an American
sculptor, best known for creating the encrypted
KryptosKryptos is a sculpture by American artist Jim Sanborn located on the grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia, USA. Since its dedication on November 3, 1990, there has been much speculation about the meaning of the encrypted messages it bears...
sculpture at
CIAThe Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government.It is an independent agency responsible for providing national security intelligence to senior United States policymakers....
headquarters in
Langley, VirginiaLangley is an unincorporated community in the census-designated place of McLean in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States.The community was essentially absorbed into McLean many years ago, although there is still a Langley High School...
.
Biography
Sanborn's father was the head of exhibitions at the
Library of CongressThe Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress and is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and holds the largest number of books. The head...
, and his mother was a concert pianist and photo researcher. He grew up in
AlexandriaAlexandria is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 128,283. Located along the Western bank of the Potomac River, Alexandria is approximately 6 miles south of downtown Washington, D.C.Like the rest of northern Virginia, as...
and Arlington, Virginia, attending JEB Stuart High School in
FairfaxThis article refers to the independent city of Fairfax, Va. For the surrounding unincorporated area of Fairfax County with a Fairfax postal address, please see Fairfax County, Virginia...
, and then attended
Randolph-Macon CollegeRandolph-Macon College is a private, co-educational liberal arts college located in Ashland, Virginia, near the capital city of Richmond. Founded in 1830, the school has an enrollment of over 1,200 students....
, receiving a degree in
paleontologyPaleontology
[from Greek: παλαιός "old, ancient", ὄν, ὀντ- "being, creature", and λόγος "speech, thought"] is the study of prehistoric life, including organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments...
, fine arts, and
social anthropologySocial anthropology is the branch of anthropology that studies how currently living human beings behave in social groups. Practitioners of social anthropology investigate, often through long-term, intensive field studies , the social organization of a particular people: customs, economic and...
in 1968, followed by a
Master of Fine ArtsIn the United States, a Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring two to three years of study. In the United Kingdom, a typically requires two years, whereas a is usually one year of study....
degree in sculpture from the
Pratt InstitutePratt Institute is a specialized private college in New York City with campuses in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Utica, New York. Pratt is one of the leading art schools in the United States and offers programs in art, architecture, fashion design, illustration, interior design, digital arts, creative...
in 1971. He taught at
Montgomery CollegeMontgomery College is a public, open access community college located in Montgomery County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C. in the United States. The college has three campuses, the largest of which is in Rockville; the other campuses are in Takoma Park/Silver Spring and Germantown...
in
Rockville, MarylandRockville is the county seat of Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. It is a major incorporated city in the central part of Montgomery County and forms part of the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area. According to estimates conducted by the U.S...
, and then for nine years was the artist-in-residence at
Glen Echo ParkGlen Echo Park can refer to:*the village of Glen Echo Park, Missouri*Glen Echo Park, Maryland, a park owned by the U.S. National Park Service in Glen Echo, Maryland*Glen Echo Park, Ontario, a naturist club in King, Ontario...
.
Art
He has created sculptural works for the
Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyThe Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological research...
, the
Central Intelligence AgencyThe Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government.It is an independent agency responsible for providing national security intelligence to senior United States policymakers....
, and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric AdministrationThe National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is a scientific agency within the United States Department of Commerce focused on the conditions of the oceans and the atmosphere...
. Themes in his work have included "making the invisible visible", with many sculptures focusing on topics such as magnetism, the
coriolis effectIn physics, the Coriolis effect is an apparent deflection of moving objects when they are viewed from a rotating reference frame.Newton's laws of motion govern the motion of an object in an inertial frame of reference. When transforming Newton's laws to a rotating frame of reference, the Coriolis...
, secret messages, and mysteries of atomic reactions.
Selected works
- Kryptos
Kryptos is a sculpture by American artist Jim Sanborn located on the grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia, USA. Since its dedication on November 3, 1990, there has been much speculation about the meaning of the encrypted messages it bears...
, CIA, 1990. Embedded with four ciphers, it was intended as a challenge to the employees at the CIA. As of 2010, only three of the four messages have been deciphered.
- Cyrillic Projector
The Cyrillic Projector is a sculpture created by American artist Jim Sanborn in the early 1990s, and was purchased by the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 1997...
, a sculpture installed at the University of North Carolina at CharlotteThe University of North Carolina at Charlotte is a public, coeducational, doctoral/research university located in Charlotte, North Carolina, one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas and second largest banking center in the United States. Today, the university is ranked by U.S...
in 1997.
- A,A, University of Houston
The University of Houston is a public research university located in Houston and is the flagship institution of the University of Houston System...
, erected in front of the UH library in 2004.
- Critical Assembly
Critical Assembly is a sculpture by artist Jim Sanborn located at which was displayed at the Corcoran Gallery of Art.-Sculpture:Critical Assembly is a sculpture by Jim Sanborn that was displayed at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 2003 during an exhibit entitled "Atomic Time: Pure Science and...
, 2003, modeled the first atomic bombs and key experiments of the Manhattan ProjectThe Manhattan Project was the codename for a project conducted during World War II to develop the first atomic bomb. The project was led by the United States, and included scientists from Denmark, The United Kingdom and Canada...
, which ran at the Corcoran Gallery of ArtThe Corcoran Gallery of Art is the largest privately supported cultural institution in Washington, DC. The museum's main focus is American art. The permanent collection includes works by Eugène Delacroix, Edgar Degas, Ian Hornak, Paul Manship, Chryssa Vardea Mavromichali, Claude Monet, Rembrandt,...
.
- Terrestrial Physics, 2009, which includes a full-scale working particle accelerator. It will premier in June 2010 as part of Biennial of the Americas.
External links
- Elonka Dunin
Elonka Dunin is a game developer at Simutronics Corp. in St. Louis, Missouri. She is one of the founders of the International Game Developers Association's Online Games group, and was editor in chief of an IGDA State of the Industry white paper.Dunin has published a book of exercises on classical...
's Sanborn page (his photograph, short biography, complete list of works)