Baby High Chair 1938

Curator: This piece is called "Baby High Chair", a watercolor created in 1938 by John Swientochowski. Editor: It has a kind of stark beauty. The muted green tones, almost gray, give it a solemn feel, like a monument to a past childhood. Curator: The austerity definitely speaks to the context of the late 1930s. We see the effects of the Depression on artistic subjects and the public appetite for pared-down, realist depictions of everyday life. These sorts of images had direct value in government programs of the era. Editor: Right. There is a vulnerability there too. Think of the inherent class and race dimensions of these images of domesticity produced during the New Deal and afterwards. Not all children were given equal conditions, or access to childhood itself. Whose children were benefitting from access to high chairs like this one? Who was excluded? Curator: Precisely, that perspective gives us important insight into its institutional function. We can understand how these images served specific ideologies, even in their quiet stillness. In this particular illustration, the chair appears devoid of its context; not quite abandoned, but not ready for a child to inhabit the space either. Editor: It feels almost haunted. Like a ghost of a child, who perhaps has even outgrown it and the promise of a bright future has dissipated. There’s so much meaning imbued in this solitary object. Curator: This makes me think of similar government programs like the FSA photography project documenting rural America. Artists were being given resources to observe, document and present life around them during those pivotal times in American history, Editor: Thinking about those intersections of art, governance and social critique makes an emotional piece all the more thought-provoking. Thank you for taking me to a space I hadn't quite conceived as a starting point before. Curator: Thank you. These types of everyday objects provide rich opportunity for exploration and I am thankful we got the chance to further analyze them and think through its meanings.