Archive: Art

• WCP: Worker Portraits: Contradictions and Contingencies

  Art depicting workers offers contradicting meanings of work in both capturing the dignity and pride of workers but also representing the struggles and hardships of labor. In Working-Class Perspectives, Sherry Linkon reflects on how these tensions manifest in a new exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery and argues that the exhibit neglects the precarious nature of work today.

  Category: Visiting Scholars Tags: Art, John Russo, National Portrait Gallery, Precariat, Precarity, Sherry Linkon, WCP, Working-Class Art, Working-Class Perspectives

• WCP: Valuing a Lost Work Culture

  Beyond a paycheck, work fosters social connection, dignity, and a sense of creativity. In this week’s Working-Class Perspective, Tim Strangleman ponders whether the decline of older industries means that fewer workers engage art in their labor.

  Category: Visiting Scholars Tags: Art, John Russo, Manufacturing, Sherry Linkon, Tim Strangleman, United Kingdom, WCP, Working-Class Art, Working-Class Culture, Working-Class Perspectives

• WCP: Art for whose Sake? Working-Class Life in Visual Art

  --- What does it mean that most museums offer few images of working-class life? The ones that do tend to show workers from the outside through middle-class perspectives. In this week's Working-Clas

  Category: Visiting Scholars Tags: Art, Jean-François Millet, John Russo, Paintings, Sarah Attfield, Sherry Linkon, Tom Roberts, WCP, Working-Class Perspectives