A look at the Hobos to Street People Exhibit and Catalogue
by Margot Pepper
Hobos to Street People Exhibit
Freedom Voices Books
For reprint requests please contact the author via wall@Freedomvoices.org
The last thing one would expect an art show and catalogue focusing on poverty to do is inspire, particularly during such challenging economic times. Curator, artist and author Art Hazelwood has masterfully juxtaposed art created during the Great Depression of the 1930s to the daring perspectives of artists interpreting similar themes today. Hobos to Street People: Artists’ Responses to Homelessness from the New Deal to the Present is empowering because it validates our experience of an “America” denied us by mainstream media. Laws have been won, agreements signed to ensure that the widespread levels of poverty of the Great Depression won’t reappear. But these laws and agreements have slowly eroded. The hope comes from the artist as historian, as a witness to these broken promises, like the heart-breaking photographs by Robert Terrell, whose ironic title draws attention to the failure of the US to live up to its obligations under the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, drafted by a committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt: "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control." (Article 25, Section1, 1948.)
