Princeton University Is Hanging A Group Of Portraits To Honor Its Blue-Collar Campus Workers

Jan 04, 2020 by apost team

On university campuses, there are usually portraits of presidents, donors, or school founders.

However, this isn’t the case at Princeton University anymore. Here you will now find blue-collar campus workers featured in portraits on center stage. These new paintings are giving a new perspective of the working class along with empowerment and racial struggle at this Ivy League school.

The artist who made the paintings, Mario Moore, sees his work as more than just decoration. He is paying tribute to these people and trying to "put them in positions of power," as he told CNN. Moore created paintings of 10 workers at Princeton. This included people in dining, ground maintenance, facilities, and security. He focused primarily on African-Americans.

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He stated he felt inspired by the migrant black families who had a hard time finding job opportunities with equal pay. Moore, who grew up in Detroit, remembered how his own father worked blue-collar jobs to be able to provide for him.

Ben Chang, a university spokesman, stated, "Mario's portraits capture beautifully the character and contributions of valued members of our campus community and bolster our broader efforts to ensure Princeton's portraiture and iconography reflect the University's values and diversity."

The university was excited to acquire the pieces and they are becoming a part of the collection permanently at the university. Moore’s paintings clearly have made a big impression on the campus.

Moore once was one of the five Hodder painting fellows studying at Princeton. Once he was done with the program, he had his paintings displayed from September to November. The Princeton University Art Museum then purchased much of his work.

When he started the project, he was only aiming to paint the male workers. But then he was moved after talking to Valeria Sykes, who was a dining hall worker. She had such a long-running history with the school he was attending.

When asked what she liked to do for fun, she answered that she liked washing her car. So he painted her detailing her car as his final painting using oil paint. This painting was eight feet tall and caught the eye of many at the exhibition. Valeria was pleased with the final painting, too, as she told CNN.

What do you think of the idea of displaying portraits of blue-collar workers at this institute?