Eileen Cooper

Exhibition: Radium Dreams

Thu 2 March 2023 - Sun 3 September 2023

Murray Edwards College

Radium Dreams is a unique collaboration between award-winning poet Sue Hubbard and internationally acclaimed artist Eileen Cooper RA who together illuminate the struggles and triumphs of one of the most brilliant women of modern times.

The exhibition showcases a series of poems and artworks inspired by the remarkable life story of the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Marie Curie. Sue Hubbard’s poems and Eileen Cooper’s drawings and collages conjure Curie’s remarkable life through closely observed moments of struggle, tenderness and joy.

The exhibition explores the theme of creative support: between Marie Curie and her sister Bronislawa, and between the scientist and her husband Pierre. This is reflected in the collaboration between a poet and artist and resonates with The Women’s Art Collection, which was created by women in a Cambridge college dedicated to educating academically outstanding young women.

Both Sue Hubbard and Eileen Cooper have played a key role in the development of The Women’s Art Collection. As an art critic Hubbard has regularly written about the Collection, while Cooper was one of the first artists to donate work and was made an Honorary Fellow of Murray Edwards in 2017. In Radium Dreams, Hubbard’s interest in the lives of historic women comes together with Cooper’s powerful and distinctive iconography of female figures.

Born in Warsaw in 1867 as Maria Sklodowska, Marie Curie emigrated to Paris aged 24 following her elder sister Bronis?awa. There she earned her higher degrees and married the French physicist Pierre Curie. In 1903 they jointly won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their pioneering work developing the theory of “radioactivity”, a term coined by Marie.

Marie Curie independently won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of the elements polonium and radium. Despite these successes, she struggled to fulfil her ambitions throughout her life: as an impoverished Polish woman studying in Paris and as a researcher in a male-dominated field. Her recognition was a result of her own steadfastness, as well as the support of those around her.

Cost: Free