BAKER LIBRARY OPENS PHOTO EXHIBIT ON INDUSTRIAL LIFE
Archive Collection Focuses on Interaction between Worker and Machine
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General Electric Company |
BOSTON - It’s the 1930s, the dawn of the study of organizational behavior, and you’re teaching Harvard Business School students about subjects such as production and marketing. How do you show them what it’s like to work in a mill? How do you put a human face on a factory?
These were questions that Harvard Business School professor Donald Davenport and Frank Ayers, executive secretary of the Business Historical Society, answered by contacting the leading businesses of the time and requesting photographs that reveal “the courage, industry, and intelligence” required of the American worker.
More than 2,100 images were donated by 115 businesses to create the Industrial Life Photographs Collections. Dating from the 1920s to the early 1940s, these pictures are the work of acclaimed photographers such as Margaret Bourke-White, Lewis Hine, and others, who, in highly stylized images, showed striking scenes of workers in a variety of manufacturing operations as well as expansive views of factory exteriors and research laboratories, along with close-ups of equipment and products.
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Bigelow-Sanford Carpet Company |
“These photographs of the industrial production practices of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s are an unparalleled record of the relationship between worker and machine, and we are indebted to Donald Davenport and Frank Ayers for having the foresight to amass such a significant collection,” said Mary Lee Kennedy, executive director of Baker Library. “The Historical Collections has introduced ‘The Human Factor’ exhibit to provide today’s students – the business leaders of tomorrow – with a deeper understanding of corporate America through the artistic lens of the Machine Age.”
Baker Library will be hosting gallery talks about the exhibit with guest curator and photo historian Melissa Banta in the North Lobby at 4pm on the following Thursdays: November 16th, January 18th, and February 8th. These events are open to the public.
A gift from the de Gaspé Beaubien Family Foundation supports the activities, projects, and programs of the HBS Historical Collections, which includes all HBS archival material and houses one of the most extensive business history resources for scholars, researchers, students, and other interested audiences around the world. It is composed of the Kress Collection of Business and Economics, widely recognized as one of the world's premier rare book collections; the Business Manuscript Collection, with approximately 1,400 sets of original business manuscripts from the fifteenth through twentieth centuries; and a collection of original company documents and reports dating from the early 1800s to the present.
About Harvard Business School
Founded in 1908 as part of Harvard University, Harvard Business School (www.hbs.edu) is located in Boston and offers full-time programs leading to the MBA and doctoral degrees, as well as more than 40 Executive Education programs. With a faculty of more than 200 distinguished scholars, the School is dedicated to educating leaders who make a difference in the world. Its core focus is to shape the practice of business, build enduring knowledge, and effectively communicate important ideas. Harvard Business School is the world’s largest producer of business cases, a method of teaching pioneered by the School in the 1920s.