Pedagogy and Propaganda

A collage by artist Brooks Turner featuring a black & white photo of four men standing beside a sign reading "Here Fell Henry Ness. Member of local 574, Veteran of the World War and martyr of labor's struggle. Shot down by police. Died July 21, 1934." The figures of the men are cut out and displayed on a floral background copied from "The Unicorn Rests in a Garden" (from the Unicorn Tapestries), 1495–1505

About the Exhibition

Artist, writer, and educator Brooks 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.

An 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.

In the Library

Artwork artists Keith Christensen and Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds

A supplemental display is on view on the fourth floor of Carleton’s Gould Library. It includes artworks by Brooks Turner and a collaboration between artists Keith Christensen and Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds highlighting the role of Native leaders in the Minneapolis Truckers Strike of 1934.

The display also showcases materials from the Carleton College Archives and Special Collections, and ephemera related to Minnesota strike history on loan from the archives of the East Side Freedom Library located in St. Paul, Minnesota.