Tony Price - Life and Times

In 1983, at the encouragement of friends and family, Price embarked on one of his most ambitious ventures to date. With an invitation from the City of New York, Price loaded a semi-trailer with several tons of Atomic Art and set out for the city where he installed his “Atomic Wind Chimes” and his grouping of metallic superpowers entitled “The Last S.A.L.T. Talks: A Trophy For The Winners of The Next Nuclear War” in Battery Park near Wall Street. The installation garnered significant media coverage including pieces by CNN and The NY Times.The Times quoted Parks Commissioner, Henry Stern

who said of the works, which stood next to large stone tablets bearing names of war dead “It’s good, art as a statement. And it’s very appropriate next to the war memorial. In the next war there won’t be any memorial”.3
Concurrent with this public display Price opened an exhibition of smaller sculptures in a space offered to him by arts patron Ann Maytag at the corner of Spring and Greene Streets in SoHo, which he dubbed the Atomic Art Gallery. Several notables in the art and entertainment world as well as numerous old friends of the artist, many of whom

he had not seen in years, attended the exhibition. Among the collectors who purchased works from this show were fashion icon Diane Von Furstenburg and other celebrities including actors Anthony Quinn, John Phillip Law and Michael Green. This project was certainly a defining moment for Price.