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For Assistant Curator Morgan Moseley, Syracuse University Art Museum’s recent exhibit is more than a job. It represents her family identity and the underrepresented forms of labor in history.

“‘Fruits of Their Labor’ is an invitation to conversations of what we think about when we think of labor,” Moseley said.

“Fruits of Their Labor” opened on Aug. 22 at the SU Art Museum. The display includes pieces from SU’s permanent collection and seeks to reimagine labor and leisure with works from the past.

​​The collection features several prominent themes, including traditional and nontraditional depictions of labor throughout history. While the traditional images of labor depict men completing physically demanding work, the nontraditional include women as mothers and caregivers.

Moseley and Interim Chief Curator Melissa Yuen worked on the collection over a six-month period, though installations of this magnitude usually require one or two years to plan.

“This exhibition really challenges us as viewers to expand our idea of what art could be, thinking beyond those brawny men working in factories to think about the other types of work that this multifaceted society undertakes,” Yuen said.

Coming from a family with a long history of manual labor, Moseley hoped to pay homage to the familiar nature of traditional work while also depicting the highly influential roles of women. She looked to female influences in her personal life, whose work was often overlooked and viewed as less impactful.

Moseley intended to do so with artworks like a photograph taken by Ed Kashi.

“I wanted the viewers, when they think of ‘women’s work’ or women at work, to question these images of the past,” Moseley said. “The images we see, like Ed Kashi’s, challenge that.”

Kashi’s photo shows a grandmother, in a wheelchair, with her grandson she gained custody of, Kashi wrote in an email statement to The Daily Orange. It follows the theme of the exhibition in showing the extenuating circumstances and hard work of a grandmother who looked after the child.

Yuen said Kashi’s photo adds an intergenerational element to the show’s message. Patrons can’t see that element in other photos because many are from artists who are no longer alive.

The curators also paid special attention to historical events like the Great Depression and the union strikes of the early 20th century to help contextualize viewers’ understanding of labor.

“(These events) don’t exist in a vacuum and they continue to have resonance in our lives today,” Yuen said.

She also pointed to the workplace changes that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic as highlighting the impact historical events have on labor. As an emerging professional during the pandemic, Moseley said many current conversations surrounding labor are similar to 20th-century discussions about work reform.

Curator of Education and Academic Outreach Kate Holohan hopes the “Fruits of Their Labor” exhibit evokes a feeling of empathy and humanity in its viewers. She hopes the feelings developed in the exhibit will make viewers more compassionate during their everyday lives, especially as election season approaches.

“That’s not necessarily going to change the world, but that building of empathy and the willingness to be in dialogue with people who are outside of your social circle can start moving our culture in a better direction,” Holohan said.

In its showcase of non-traditional definitions of labor, the exhibit also focuses on the entertainment industry. It not only depicts the glamorized chicanery of performers within the industry but also the behind-the-scenes work put in by stagehands.

“There’s work that goes behind having these ‘perfect performances,’ so I wanted to show that,” Moseley said.

The entertainment portion of the exhibit resonated with Eric Zaks, a junior supply chain management and accounting major at SU. The collection helped him contextualize the lives of circus workers and better understand the unfamiliar line of work.

“The fact that they were able to capture that feeling of vibrance and fun, contrasted to the work done by those circus workers, I thought that was pretty cool,” Zaks said.

Through its varying representations of labor throughout history and across industries, Yuen and Mosely hope for museum-goers like Zaks to develop a more holistic view of the meaning of labor.

Published on September 5, 2024 at 12:09 am