Three Lane Traffic

Three Lane Traffic

Harry Gottlieb

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gottlieb made this print at the New York Graphic Arts Division, the first of many printshops opened by the Federal Art Project and a breeding ground for the creation of socially conscious prints. The composition is divided into three parts. In the left foreground are striking workers, identifiable by their protest signs, and on the right are pedestrians, hurriedly walking with umbrellas in hand. In the background, sitting inside and protected from the rain, are capitalists—represented by two rotund men in suits—who, in the eyes of the artist, were responsible for the type of labor exploitation being protested on the street before them. Despite the strikers’ dogged determination, both the pedestrians and capitalists meet them with indifference, suggesting how commonplace such events had become.


Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.