Art for change? It is often taken for granted that art functions as a tool and a vehicle of social change; indeed, it was just this theme that we took up in our first discussion board posting. While the vocal majority seemed to agree that art could foster social change, many of us, when encountering work such as Warhol’s ​200 One Dollar Bills​ or Marcel Duchamp’s​Fountain might find ourselves wondering exactly what type of change such work could really make. Does a painting that takes money for its subject do anything to unsettle a culture that seems more and more to place the individual pursuit of money above the needs of the community? Does a urinal inscribed with a forged signature (see Duchamp’s work mentioned above) do anything more than offer a paltry challenge to the taste of a leisured class? It was precisely the complicity of market system art like Duchamp’s and the American Pop artists like Warhol, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg with the oppressive class that was at the heart of a 1973 protest staged in front of another landmark Sotheby’s auction. On that October day a group of New York City taxi drivers and artists stood before the renowned auction house to call down Robert C. Scull who they claimed made his fortune robbing cabbies and hawking art. Some of the artists marching in solidarity with the taxi cab drivers rushed out to a nearby hardware store to by a snow shovel to sell at exorbitant price, poking fun at Duchamp’s ​In Advance of the Broken Arm​. Is this critique of art’s complicity with big money an apt one? The idea that the art market is synonymous with ‘business as usual’ is an idea that is as pervasive today as ever—if not more so. As Eleanor Heartney reminds us in her lecture on art and labour, one move made by activists of the recent Occupy Wall Street movement was to set up occupations in a number of New York City’s museums. The organizers of the Occupy Museums march declared in a public statement that “for the past decade and more, artists and art lovers have been the victims of the intense commercialization and co-optation or art.” They further claimed that “art is for everyone, across all classes and cultures and communities” and not merely for the cultural elite, or the 1%. The artist activists closed their statement by exhorting museums to open their minds and their hearts:​ ​“Art is for everyone!” they claimed. “The people are at your door!” These two protests demonstrate an abiding and perhaps growing suspicion of the received idea that market system art can change things. But while market system art is placed under intense scrutiny, a growing field of artists and educators have been working to disseminate the practices and techniques of art making in order to sow the seeds of change. This community based art (sometimes referred to as ‘dialogical art’ or ‘community arts’) seeks to place in the hands of the marginalized, the worker, or, in the words of the.

1. Art for change?
It is often taken for granted that art functions as a tool and a
vehicle of social change;
indeed, it was just this theme that we took up in our first
discussion board posting. While the
vocal majority seemed to agree that art could foster social
change, many of us, when
encountering work such as Warhol’s 200 One Dollar Bills or
Marcel Duchamp’sFountain
might find ourselves wondering exactly what type of change
such work could really make.
Does a painting that takes money for its subject do anything to
unsettle a culture that seems
more and more to place the individual pursuit of money above
the needs of the community?
Does a urinal inscribed with a forged signature (see Duchamp’s
work mentioned above) do
anything more than offer a paltry challenge to the taste of a
leisured class?
It was precisely the complicity of market system art like
Duchamp’s and the American Pop
artists like Warhol, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg with
the oppressive class that
was at the heart of a 1973 protest staged in front of another
landmark Sotheby’s auction. On
that October day a group of New York City taxi drivers and
artists stood before the renowned
auction house to call down Robert C. Scull who they claimed
made his fortune robbing
cabbies and hawking art. Some of the artists marching in

2. solidarity with the taxi cab drivers
rushed out to a nearby hardware store to by a snow shovel to
sell at exorbitant price, poking
fun at Duchamp’s In Advance of the Broken Arm. Is this
critique of art’s complicity with big
money an apt one?
The idea that the art market is synonymous with ‘business as
usual’ is an idea that is as
pervasive today as ever—if not more so. As Eleanor Heartney
reminds us in her lecture on
art and labour, one move made by activists of the recent Occupy
Wall Street movement was
to set up occupations in a number of New York City’s museums.
The organizers of the
Occupy Museums march declared in a public statement that “for
the past decade and more,
artists and art lovers have been the victims of the intense
commercialization and co-optation
or art.” They further claimed that “art is for everyone, across all
classes and cultures and
communities” and not merely for the cultural elite, or the 1%.
The artist activists closed their
statement by exhorting museums to open their minds and their
hearts: “Art is for everyone!”
they claimed. “The people are at your door!”
These two protests demonstrate an abiding and perhaps growing
suspicion of the received
idea that market system art can change things. But while market
system art is placed under
intense scrutiny, a growing field of artists and educators have
been working to disseminate
the practices and techniques of art making in order to sow the
seeds of change. This
community based art (sometimes referred to as ‘dialogical art’

3. or ‘community arts’) seeks to
place in the hands of the marginalized, the worker, or, in the
words of the Occupy
Movement, the 99%, the means of cultural production. The hope
is that providing someone
with the tools to tell her story in her words, will foster the sort
of change that some fear art
has become incapable of.
Community based art: a voice of change, a voice of one’s own
A term popularized in the 1960s, community based art, and
community based art education
quickly became a popular practice of cultural enrichment in
community centres, union halls,
and educational institutions across North America, parts of
Europe, and Austrailia. Although
the recent economic downturn and the resulting deep budget
cuts have lead to the stemming
of funds to such programs, the success stories and the tangible
production of meaning and
pride that have resulted from these initiatives show us art really
does have the power to
make change; indeed, commentators such as Mcleod might well
argue that the sorts of cuts
we see happening to arts budgets are not merely the result of
necessary ‘belt-tightening’, but
instead represent an active effort to undermine the change
provoked by such community
based art work.
The idea behind community based art is simple: it is meant to

4. give voice to the otherwise
voiceless or silenced. Two fundamental and related claims lay
at the foundation of
community based art: 1) that the canonical, or market system art
of the cultural elite neither
speaks to nor for the experience of marginalized or under-
privileged groups, classes, or
communities; 2) that art and the means of its production are not
the exclusive property of a
creative or initiated class. To put it in somewhat less politicized
terms: community based art
allows folks to tell their own stories, in their own words.
Community based art in practice
Community based art involves an artist or art educator working
within a classroom or
community to teach the techniques and practices of artmaking.
Equipped with these tools
students and community members are able to engage with their
own experiences of their
culture, workplace, and daily lives. Such work documents these
experiences and allows for
such newly empowered artists to paint, narrate, play, sing,
photograph, sculpt, or act their
stories their way. In the process of this expression one is invited
to reflect on oneself and
one’s values, and a new relationship with one’s place in the
larger social context is fostered;
one is invited to open both to one’s own creative processes and
that of others. In sharing in
these explorations with others, one encounters both the
similarities and the differences
between oneself and the community with which he or she works.
Community based art is often created with specific goals in

5. mind. Some work is produced to
raise awareness about certain a certain cause or community
concern such as bolstering
labour relations, or the prevention of gang violence, drug use,
or the spread of STDs. One
recent community based art program has taken up the cause of
making people more
comfortable with the idea extended breastfeeding. Far from
being prescriptive, these goals
are arrived at organically by members of the community.
Other work is meant to document the story of an under-
represented segment of society. The
photographs of Hurmuses, the WDI photography program, and
those available on the
websites of unions such as OPSEU’s do just this work. They
show people on the job, on the
picket line, on the march on labour day, and otherwise sharing
in and working with their
community. Documentaries like China Blue andMaquilapolis by
Vicky Funari and Sergio de
la Torre (discussed by Eleanor Heartney in this week’s second
video) also do this sort of
work; Funari and de la Torre, for instance, invited the
maquiladora workers documented in
their film to themselves shoot footage and conduct interviews.
We have already had a taste of the sort of work community
based art programs do today, in
the shape of the photography produce by Gayle Hurmuses, and
in the rap, graphic design
and photography programs of the WDI. Eleanor Heartney in her
video describes some

6. market system artists whose work can be productively read as
taking up the practices of
community based art, just as the work of John Ahearn (taken up
in our third reading) can be.
Throughout the remainder of the semester we will continue to
explore community based art
both as it was practiced in decades past, and as it is practiced
today.
Reading 3: Whose Art Is It?
“John went home from the meeting with “community”
approval— though it is probably
accurate to say that a community board of thirty-five people
appointed by their borough
president is no more and no less “the community” than a block
on Walton Avenue.”
– Jane Kramer
In this the third reading of module 3 & 4 Jane Kramer explores
the controversial work John
Ahearn produced for New York City’s Percent for Art program.
Ahearn is a white artist with
an upper middleclass background, who moved to a South Bronx
neighbourhood to work in
and with a community he’d grown to love and be a part of. The
work he produced for the
44th Police Precinct, featured painted bronze castings of
members of the Ahearn’s Walton
Avenue neighbourhood. The response to Ahearn’s work raises a
number of question about
who the artist works for (especially where his work is meant to

7. represent a community); To
whom the art work belongs; how the race and privilege of the
artist impacted upon the work’s
interpretation; and otherwise challenges us to think about the
conflicting and overlapping
values of market system art and community based art.
While Ahearn is undoubtedly an exponent of the art market and
the gallery system, he has
nonetheless tirelessly worked to embed himself in his South
Bronx community the better to
work through and with it. He views his effort to produce work
that he felt represented the
community— indeed, work that was produced with the
community— as a failure precisely
because of the ways in which it upset a number of parties. He
even going so far as to alter
the work to better please the work’s critics. Yet, despite the
harsh and emotionally charged
criticism of Ahearn’s work, both his subjects (Corey and
Raymond) and his appointed jury of
artists and officials deemed the work good, or even important.
What do you think of Ahearn’s work? Was it a misguided
attempt to speak for a community
he had no business attempting to speak for? Was he
misunderstood by his detractors? Did
the community ultimately gain or lose by the removal of his
short lived installation?
1
AMERICAN HISTORY BEFORE 1870: COTTON GIN
1

8. American History before 1870: Cotton Gin
Name
Institutional affiliation
Date
American History before 1870: Cotton Gin
The topic for this project is the invention of Cotton gin. The
reason for the choice of this topic is based on the desire to learn
about how the American economy came to thrive during the
18th and 19th centuries. It is intriguing that early industrial
revolution started in Europe and America later surpassed Europe
in production and economic performance. The cotton gin was
invented by Eli Whitney in 1794 and helped in speeding the
process of separating the seeds from the fiber. With this topic,
we will be able to understand how this invention helped in
improvement of production and increase in the exports by the
United States, which helped in improving the economy of the
United States.
The period after which America gained independence in 1776 up
to 1860 is considered as the new nation. During these times, the
economy of the United States relied heavily on agriculture.
With the introduction of the steamboats and canal building,
more areas for agriculture were being founded and farming
became expansive. There was production of crops such as rice,

9. cotton, tobacco, among others, which were sold in the local
markets and promoted local economy. After independence,
farmers concentrated more in increasing their output although
there were many challenges such as lack of mechanization,
losses during adverse climate, and lack of market to some of
their produce. Even with these challenges, this period marked a
great milestone in setting the pace for the improvement of
America`s economy.
One of the major challenges during agriculture was in the
production of cotton. Even though the climate and other factors
favored growing of cotton, there was one major problem:
separating cotton seeds from fiber. The demand for cotton was
growing and even though the cotton plant was being grown
widely, the supply could not meet the demand due to the slow
process of separating the seed from the fiber. The discovery of
the cotton gin in 1794 by Eli Whitney was a major milestone in
the production of cotton that increased the production and
became a major export of the United States. Notably, the
discovery of the cotton gin led to increased demand, which also
led to the increase in demand for labor to more production of
cotton. As a matter of fact, the discovery of the cotton gin led
to a situation that favored slavery due to the increased wealth of
the farmers in the south due to the sale of more cotton. The
cotton gin did not therefore lead to more production of cotton
but also other social issues of interest that have helped shape
the United States.
In the larger study of history, it is important to understand how
the America`s economy came into being one of the best even
when Europe had much influence across the world in the past.
Learning about the cotton gin helps us understand how the
United States was in a position to position itself in becoming a
superpower and taking over the second industrial revolution.
The discovery of the cotton gin had ripple effects to the
economy and to the society at large, all of which have helped
shape United States history.

10. Outline
Introduction
The cotton gin was invented by Eli Whitney in 1794 and helped
in speeding the process of separating the seeds from the fiber.
The discovery of the cotton gin helped spearhead economic
production and fueled the second industrial revolution, which
contributed to the United States becoming a superpower.
1. After gaining independence, the United States decided to
focus more on economic production
· The period after which America gained independence in 1776
up to 1860 is considered as the new nation.
· The new nation created a new front for economic production
in the United States
2. The agriculture industry was becoming more popular as the
main economic activity
· There was increase in production of rice, tobacco, corn, and
cotton for local consumption
The demand for more agricultural produce was a major
concern among farmers
3. The discovery of the cotton gin was a game changer in the
agriculture industry
· History of Eli Whitney
· Factors that led to the discovery of the cotton gin
4. The cotton gin increased the production of cotton, which was
in high demand across Europe
· More farmers were becoming wealthy
· The demand for labor increased slavery
· The discovery of the cotton gin helped spearhead economic
production and fueled the second industrial revolution, which

11. contributed to the United States becoming a superpower.
References
Ashworth, W. J. (2017). The industrial revolution: The state,
knowledge and global trade. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Beckert, S. (2015). Empire of cotton: A global history. Vintage.
Gold, H. (2018). Panel Introduction: Labor, Industry, and
Technology. Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 47(47), 29-
32.
Hanlon, W. W. (2015). Necessity is the mother of invention:
Input supplies and Directed Technical
Change. Econometrica, 83(1), 67-100.
Shi, D. E., & Tindall, G. B. (2016). America: A narrative
history. WW Norton & Company.