The Workers Museum

One last museum from my trip to a few European countries. This one is the Workers Museum in Copenhagen. It's not a large museum, and as might be expected from its topic, it's humble compared to many other museums I've seen. The experience of going through it is not as controlled through layout as in most museums I've visited, for instance.

We started with an exhibit that contained this wall-hanging:


Which is the Danish wording of the well-known labor adage, "8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, 8 hours for what we will."


The museum and its content are unapologetically social-democratic.


One section focused on the retirement benefits won over the years through the workers' struggle.

Speaking/reading no Danish at all, sometimes I could only appreciate the beauty of the lettering on some of the historic signs included:




This sign is inside a recreation of a 1950s working-class coffee bar.

The biggest exhibition in the museum was on the second floor of the labor hall adjoining the main museum. It featured the work of Peter Peitersen (1922–1988), a bricklayer, illustrator, and graphic designer. To protest working conditions, Peitersen drew posters and flyers for demonstrations and protest meetings, created large figures to be driven around on vehicles when demonstrating, and produced drawings for the unions’ papers. Here are a couple of his posters:




According to the accompanying panels, Peitersen believed "art should not only reach the people — it was a weapon in the battle to improve conditions for ordinary people."

He was born in Aarhus, Jutland, where he also lived most of his life. Every day he walked from one building site to the other estimating the prices of the work he bricklayers were to do.

He knew the streets, the workplaces and the pubs like the back of this hand. Above all, he knew the people he encountered there. His pictures are about these people.

As a youngster Peter Peitersen took a drawing course. In the mid-1950s, he also attended a course, where he drew a live model. He never had any other artistic training and taught himself the rest.

In the 1950s he exhibited his pictures with the artist group De 10 at Aarhus town hall, but this wasn’t satisfying. He didn’t want to create pictures only to exhibit them. His pictures were to depict the reality of the worker and the unemployed. They were to be seen by ordinary people and give them a feeling of solidarity.

Through art, he could make himself be heard and protest the injustices in society.

One prominent piece in the exhibit wasn't a poster, but a piece of political art, called Cultural Imperialism and dated 1952:


The accompanying card reads, "It looks like a drunk standing in a gateway vomiting, but it’s American culture that has been on the menu. Was Peter Peitersen inspired by the Marshall Plan aid to create the drawing?" (I can't help thinking the vomiting figure, representing the U.S., looks like our current president, but that's not possible, given the date.)


Last out of the mouth is a fat-cat banker, but he's preceded by a soldier, a bunch of crosses, a copy of the Danish newspaper Avisen, a woman in a bikini, a café sign...


...the Lone Ranger (or maybe just a cowboy), a superhero, a pinup girl, Popeye, an airplane, and a few other figures I can't identify.

It seemed to fit squarely in the tradition of anti-imperialist art that used to be common but isn't seen much anymore, and I wish I could have reproduced it better here.

See more of Peitersen's work on the museum's website.