A fresco painting with scenes in color and black and white.
Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College
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Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College

The fresco shows scenes in color with two black and white scenes in the lower left. The top left shows a group of men wearing miner’s helmets who are facing left. In the center two men are lying on the ground, to the right is the rump of a horse. The black and white scene on the left shows four men lying on the ground, in the background is a uniformed man on a motorcycle and a sign on a truck which reads “on to Washington, for Jobless Relief.” In the second scene a group of men on the ground are being attacked by uniformed men with raised batons.

Gallery Text

As a newly minted Harvard graduate, Lewis Rubenstein painted this social realist mural with his mentor Rico Lebrun on the fourth floor of the Fogg Art Museum, which had opened its new building on this site in 1927. The fresco’s composition is structured as a montage of scenes seemingly pulled from newsreels and newspapers. They depict black and white unemployed workers and World War I veterans agitating together for federal relief and protesting the government’s denial of promised bonuses for wartime service, as police and the military respond with violence.

Rubenstein had recently returned from Italy, where he studied Renaissance fresco techniques with Lebrun. Joining a hunger march on Washington in the winter of 1932, he experienced deprivation and witnessed the kind of police actions depicted here. In preparation for the mural, the two artists made large-scale figure studies, taking material from Rubenstein’s sketchbook and hiring unemployed men as models. On the strength of the Hunger March fresco, in 1935 Charles Kuhn, curator of Harvard’s Germanic Museum (now the Busch-Reisinger), commissioned Rubenstein to paint a mural cycle at that museum’s first home, in Adolphus Busch Hall, a short walk from here.

The recent renovation and expansion of the Harvard Art Museums necessitated the removal of Hunger March. The section of masonry wall to which the fresco adheres, along with connecting structural elements, was hoisted out of the building. Relocated to its new position in this gallery, the painting is set at its original height from the floor. Evidence that it was formerly positioned under a much lower ceiling is visible where the top of the mural meets a steel I-beam that supported the museum’s roof.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
1933.192
People
Lewis W. Rubenstein, American (Buffalo, NY 1908 - 2003 Shelburne, VT)
Rico Lebrun, American (Naples, Italy 1900 - 1964 Malibu, CA)
Title
The Hunger March
Classification
Paintings
Work Type
mural painting
Date
1933
Places
Creation Place: North America, United States, Massachusetts, Cambridge
Culture
American
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/54691

Location

Location
Level 1, Room 1320, Modern and Contemporary Art, Social Realism
View this object's location on our interactive map

Physical Descriptions

Medium
True Fresco
Technique
Fresco painting

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Lewis W. Rubenstein, gift; to Fogg Art Museum, 1933.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Lewis W. Rubenstein
Accession Year
1933
Object Number
1933.192
Division
Modern and Contemporary Art
Contact
am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Publication History

  • Louise Orsini, "The Technical Analysis and Treatment of Hunger March by Lewis Rubenstein and Rico Lebrun" (thesis (certificate in conservation), Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, 2010), Unpublished, pp. 1-59 passim
  • Geoff Edgers, After 6 years, Harvard Art Museums reemerging, The Boston Globe, April 13, 2014
  • Colleen Walsh, Art for viewers’ sake: Long-hidden mural will be front and center in revamped Harvard Art Museums, Harvard Gazette, Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, April 16, 2014)
  • Teri Hensick, Tony Sigel, Henry Lie, Narayan Khandekar, Kate Smith, Francesca Bewer, Angela Chang, Louise Orsini, and Erin Mysak, Protection and Relocation of Frescoes During Construction at the Harvard Art Museum, Subliming Surfaces: Volatile Binding Media in Heritage Conservation, ed. Christina Rozeik, University of Cambridge Museums (https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.41335, 2018), Pages 141-152, Figure 3, Page 143; Figure 11, Page 147; Figure 13, Page 149; Figure 14, Page 149

Exhibition History

  • 32Q: 1320 Social Realism, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/16/2014 - 01/01/2050

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Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu