For more than fifty years,
Art-In-Industry has been building one of today’s most extensive private art collections of prints and posters associated with industry and labor.
Currently numbering over 750 pieces, this collection, on its own, can populate exhibitions on subjects ranging from coal mining to dam and bridge construction; iron, steel and textile manufacturing; war production; railway and ship building as well as printing and publication.
The collection features work from 1750 to today with American (Pennell, Lozowick, Nesbitt, Landeck, McPherson, Sternberg, Allen, Eby, Kuhler, Mielatz, Hurwitz) as well as international artists (Pissarro, Steinlen, Luce, Jongkind, Desmazieres, Bonhomme, Nevinson, Wadsworth, Bone, Leighton, Luce, Hemery, Secheret, Clausen, Picabia, Leger, Brangwyn, Sharples, Barfoot, Hiroshige).
The goal of the collection is to raise to consciousness the various artistic reflections and interpretations of the world of work and industry. The collection does this through exhibiting, contributing to exhibitions and sharpening its own focus through buying and selling prints and posters.
Here you can browse featured works from the collection, review previous exhibitions (such as The Heart of Progress: Coal, Iron and Steam since 1750) and investigate how to curate your own exhibitions, large or small, specific or general.
ABOUT THE COLLECTOR
With the help and support of his wife Susie, John has put together this collection over the last three and a half decades.
John, an organizational consultant and an author spent much of his childhood in the coal mining hills of western Pennsylvania and for decades consulted to large petrochemical complexes in northeastern England and northern Europe.
In his work, John was surrounded by landscapes marked by cooling towers, pipe bridges, cat crackers, methane fermenters, machine works, and nuclear power plants. “Having had the privilege of working in heavy industry, my collection helps me recall the rhythms, colors, sounds, and feel of these places and times. The memories have become a constant reference. For over five decades, I’ve continued to search for similarly captivating views in life and art.”
Links to John’s work and writings: