Randolph-Macon College Presents Lecture on Giacomo Patri

Ben Shahn, Welders (For Full Employment after the War), 1944

Randolph-Macon College will host a lecture by Dr. John Ott, titled “Brotherhood on Paper: Giacomo Patri and the Representation of Interracial Solidarity in the American Labor Movement,” on Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 6:30 p.m. in the Topping Room of Old Chapel.

Ott will discuss print artist Giacomo Patri’s work to document, celebrate and advocate for the racial integration of the Marine Cooks and Stewards Association. In Patri’s 1944 comic-book history of the San Francisco-based CIO-member union, Ott believes he demonstrated that the visual and textual rhetoric of labor solidarity did not always perfectly align with the goals of racial integration and workplace egalitarianism.

Ott is an associate professor of art history at James Madison University. His areas of research interest include art history of the U.S. before 1945, with emphasis on art patronage, museums, and markets, and on social class and its intersections with ethnicity and gender. His research also includes Pre-Columbian Art, with emphasis on Aztec Mesoamerica. Ott is a Smithsonian Postdoctoral Fellow for 2009-2010.

This event is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the Randolph-Macon College art history department and funded by CASE (Committee on Assemblies and Special Events).

For more information on this lecture, contact Dr. Evie Terrono at (804) 752-7242 or eterrono@rmc.edu.