Now showing at the Carleton College Perlman Teaching Museum until November 15, 2023: Pedagogy and Propaganda from artist, writer, and educator Brooks Turner.
Turner questions narratives which are fixed in the archives of libraries, museums, and textbooks. His research engages histories of fascism in his home state of Minnesota, often exploring the racial, political, and economic turbulence of these events and their relevance today.
Pedagogy and Propaganda centers on a series of strikes in 1934 which took place in the Minneapolis Warehouse District, then a major distribution center of the Upper Midwest. These fierce clashes pitted General Drivers Local 574 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters against the Minneapolis Police Department and the Citizen’s Alliance, then a dominant employer’s organization which was staunchly anti-union. As we approach the 90th anniversary of the strikes, Turner’s new series of large-scale textiles illustrate tactics of anti-fascist resistance through the historical lens of union organizing and labor history. Strikes, picketing, and protests are on the rise today; a 2023 study from Cornell University found that strikes were up by 52 percent in 2022 as workers increasingly speak out about workplace dissatisfaction.
The adjacent gallery brings together a 2020–21 series of silken draperies which blend archival, primary-source content from newspapers with Turner’s original drawings. These works track the rise of fascist organizations and ideologies in the 1930s—in particular, the pro-Nazi organization the Silver Legion of America (or Silvershirts). Documents Turner unearthed in the Minnesota Historical Society archives record sympathetic relationships between this hate group, prominent businessmen, and government officials of the time, as well as the journalists, Jewish activists, and union organizers who opposed them.
Learn more about the Brooks Turner exhibition at https://www.carleton.edu/museum/exhibitions/brooks-turner/
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Perlman Teaching Museum: https://www.carleton.edu/museum/
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Carleton College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college of 2,000 students in Northfield, Minnesota. The nation’s top college for undergraduate teaching, Carleton is known for its academic rigor, intellectual curiosity, and sense of humor.