News Release

New Photo Exhibit Premieres at Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge on December 12

US Department of Energy / Ed Westcott

News Release Date: December 6, 2023

Contact: Chris Derman, [phone]

OAK RIDGE, Tennessee: Manhattan Project National Historical Park’s most recent photo exhibit, “Recess - A Photographic Exhibition of Recreation in the Secret City” will open on Tuesday, December 12, in the Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge’s Imagination Gallery.

Morale and absenteeism were prime concerns for wartime operations in Oak Ridge.  Living in a newly built city still in the throes of rapid construction, rationing and shortages of consumer goods, working on the top-secret war project with little evidence of their contribution to the war, all these hardships played to sow doubt for the 80,000 war workers of the Clinton Engineer Works.  As a result, the army enlisted the Recreation and Welfare Association to keep the workers and their families, active, social, and happy.

The photographs of “Recess” were taken by James Edward Westcott, a renowned photographer who worked for the United States government in Oak Ridge during the Manhattan Project and the Cold War. Westcott was one of the few people permitted to have a camera in the Oak Ridge area during the Manhattan Project.  While much of his work was documenting the war time work of the Clinton Engineer Works, these photos of daily life were primarily taken during his work for the Oak Ridge Journal, the weekly newspaper published from September 4, 1943, to May 27, 1948.

With the new photo exhibit, the Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge is offering a day of free admission on Sunday, December 17.