-Mohawk and Hudson Railroad- still bank c. 1930

Editor: So, here we have a -Mohawk and Hudson Railroad- still bank, crafted around 1930 by the Van Gytenbeek Manufacturing Company. It seems to be made of metal, perhaps bronze. It feels like a commentary on American progress... I'm struck by the depiction of westward expansion beneath the train. What do you make of it? Curator: What's most interesting to me is the layering of materials and their symbolic weight. You've got the industrial train rendered in metal – a clear symbol of capitalist ambition – juxtaposed against the relief carvings below depicting scenes that are, to be frank, a sanitized view of settler colonialism. Editor: A sanitized view? Curator: Absolutely. Consider the labor that went into constructing railroads – often exploitative. And then, reflect on what the railroad *meant* for Indigenous communities, whose lands were divided and resources extracted for the benefit of industry. The still bank's metal – most likely produced through intense mining efforts – becomes a physical embodiment of those unequal power dynamics. Editor: So, the material itself tells a story about production and its consequences. It's a little chilling how an object meant for savings can carry such weight. Does the bank as a container affect your reading? Curator: Precisely! It domesticates the ruthless advance of industry, encourages participation in the very system it portrays. By turning it into a commonplace object of the home and consumption, you become complicit in it by participating. Do you agree? Editor: That gives me a lot to reflect on: the steel as both infrastructure and instrument and its connection to displacement. It’s interesting to observe an object created from capitalist ideas, used for consumerism, commenting on capitalism itself. Curator: Right! It complicates our understanding of progress in America. The choice of materials implicates our own consumption habits within the very issues being illustrated.