[/media-credit]
- Artist Steve Lambert’s sign will go on display tomorrow outside the cafeteria.
by Leah Budson
Even though the Occupy movement has quieted down, conversations about the distribution of wealth are far from over.
Tomorrow between 9:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. students and faculty will be asked to consider their position on capitalism by voting the statement “Capitalism works for me!” true or false.
The nine-foot by 20-foot vintage-style sign will go outside the cafeteria. To vote the statement true or false, participants must push a button. Two prominent scoreboards will tally up the votes, said the artist Steve Lambert on WBUR.
Art teacher Shannon Slattery said the interactive element of the sign is one of the most interesting parts. “Good art provokes opinions—positive and negative. A part of all artwork is what the viewer brings to it.”
“Capitalism is the system that we live under in this country. Lambert is asking you to question that system. Are you a person who benefits from this system, or are you a person who feels victimized?”
The sign has already traveled to six locations in Cleveland, Ohio and three in the Boston area: Davis Square in Somerville, the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and Hyde Square in Boston, according to Slattery.
The sign is a off-site project from the 2012 deCordava Sculpture Park and Museum Biennial exhibition. Alex Jacobson ’04, an intern at deCordava with a degree in fine arts, brought the sign to this school, Slattery said.
This school will be the sign’s first time at a high school, according to Slattery, “Getting a lot of different types of people to interact with the sign is part of the artist’s goal.”
Slattery thought that students may not understand how the exhibit is art, but hopes “it will open students’ minds to thinking that there’s more to art than drawings and paintings.”
“What artists learn in school are the basic tools, and after, they can take those tools and go where they want to go with them.”
