Maier event to focus on women workers

Harriet Bart’s “Drawn in Smoke” memorializes young immigrant workers, mostly women and girls, who died in the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

“Uncover/Recover: Remembering Women Workers” will be held on Tuesday, March 19, at 7 p.m. in the Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College.

The event is in conjunction with the College’s 112th Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Art, Back to Front: Artists’ Books by Women. 

The exhibit includes artist Harriet Bart’s Drawn in Smoke, which memorializes young immigrant workers, mostly women and girls, who died in the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. The disaster set in motion major labor reforms, but the workers were largely forgotten. 

During the event, Laura McManus, the Maier’s curator of education, will discuss Bart’s intent and the process by which she created the portraits in smoke to honor each victim. 

A documentary focusing on the creation of a memorial, unveiled in October, remembering the victims will also be shown, and English professor Laura-Gray Street will read poems from her chapbook Shift Work, which was published in 2018 and explores the often overlooked role of women and femininity in the historical struggle for dignity in work.

The event is free and open to the public.