Invisible Labor - Tumblr Posts

more context w/r/t museum guards, living wages, and essential but often overlooked arts workers

“An Artist an Met Museum Guard Whose New Work Is About Pay: Her Own,” (Emilie Lemakis) | 2022,  New York Times (paywall; I’ll try to get screengrabs up soon)

“Invisible Man: At the Whitney, Fred Wilson Comments on the Status of Museum Guards,” (Fred Wilson) | 2012, Art Observer (open access article; the Whitney has information about the works here)

“Visiting Hours,” a poem by Essex Hemphill (1957-1995), who worked as a museum guard in Washington, D.C. | 1992, Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry, Plume: 1992, screen capture from archive.org)

Women’s unpaid and often unacknowledged labour literally props up just about everything and it’s so taken for granted it’s rendered nigh invisible, to the point everyone, including the women doing the work, reproduce these systems automatically without even realizing it’s happening.

And even in leftist/progressive spaces and homes,falling into gendered divisions of labour can happen insidiously even when there’s a concious effort to avoid it.

I encourage everyone, not just men, to think about how this plays out in our everyday lives both in the labour around us we take for granted and in the labour we’re actually performing.

And this includes mental and emotional labour as much as physical. If you and your wife split physical housework 50/50 but she’s the only one keeping track of your family calendars, picking out gifts and remembering cards for birthdays, making the grocery lists, doing social and emotional work to maintain your social/familial relationships, etc, then it’s not truly 50/50.

And contrary to popular belief, this mental work is exhausting and tolling, and not something that women are naturally more innate to have the capacity for. It’s often something that falls to us/on us.