In keeping with their aspirations to “invest the experience of public space with wonder,” The Bruce High Quality Foundation is currently exhibiting Art History With Labor in New York’s Lever House Art Collection through September 28th. The exhibit consists of three pieces on display in the open-air courtyard and the glass-walled lobby of the Lever House.
The cast-bronze shell of “The New Colossus” stands guard outside: it is a twelve-foot rat, the dimensions modeled after the inflatable icon of American labor unions used to protest the use of strikebreakers. Solidifying the image in the more permanent casing, the artists create a smooth, sleek, industrial image that recalls the very mechanization it originally mocked.