Day Jobs

About the Exhibition

One of the typical measures of success for artists is the ability to quit their day jobs and focus full time on making art. Yet these roles are not always an impediment to an artist’s career. This exhibition illuminates how day jobs can spur creative growth by providing artists with unexpected new materials and methods, working knowledge of a specific industry that becomes an area of artistic interest or critique, or a predictable structure that opens space for unpredictable ideas. As artist and lawyer Ragen Moss states:

Typologies of thought are more interrelated than bulky categories like ‘lawyer’ or ‘artist’ allow. . . Creativity is not displaced by other manners of thinking; but rather, creativity runs alongside, with, into, and sometimes from other manners of thinking.

Day Jobs, the first major exhibition to examine the overlooked impact of day jobs on the visual arts, is dedicated to demystifying artistic production and upending the stubborn myth of the artist sequestered in their studio, waiting for inspiration to strike. The exhibition will make clear that much of what has determined the course of modern and contemporary art history are unexpected moments spurred by pragmatic choices rather than dramatic epiphanies. Conceived as a corrective to the field of art history, the exhibition also encourages us to more openly acknowledge the precarious and generative ways that economic and creative pursuits are intertwined.

The exhibition will feature work produced in the United States after World War II by artists who have been employed in a host of part- and full-time roles: dishwasher, furniture maker, graphic designer, hairstylist, ICU nurse, lawyer, and nanny–and in several cases, as employees of large companies such as Ford Motors, H-E-B Grocery, and IKEA. The exhibition will include approximately 75 works in a broad range of media by emerging and established artists such as Emma Amos, Genesis Belanger, Larry Bell, Mark Bradford, Lenka Clayton, Jeffrey Gibson, Jay Lynn Gomez, Tishan Hsu, VLM (Virginia Lee Montgomery), Ragen Moss, Howardena Pindell, Chuck Ramirez, Robert Ryman, and Fred Wilson, among many others.

✸ Get to know #5WomenArtists featured in the show in our blog post written for Women’s History Month.
✸ Read about 14 visual artists at the Blanton on how their museum jobs might inspire their practice.

Organized by Veronica Roberts, Former Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, with Lynne Maphies, Former Curatorial Assistant, Blanton Museum of Art

MEMBERS SEE IT FIRST.

Hear from the Artists

Listen to select interviews with Day Jobs artists by clicking on the names below (includes transcriptions):

Upcoming / Past Events

Image Gallery

Credit

Day Jobs is organized by the Blanton Museum of Art.

Presenting Partner: Indeed

Generous funding for this exhibition is provided in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, John H. Baker and Christine Ogata, Ellen and David Berman, and Anthony and Celeste Meier; with additional support from Suzanne Deal Booth, Nicole and George Jeffords, Jeanne and Michael Klein, the Robert Lehman Foundation, and Kathleen Irvin Loughlin and Christopher Loughlin. Support is also provided by Leah Bennett, Carol LeWitt, and Lea Weingarten.

Press

Arts & Culture Texas, Informed by Labor: Day Jobs at the Blanton Museum of Art

Artsy, 5 Artists on the Day Jobs that Helped Them Launch Their Careers

artnet, Artists Have Long Held Day Jobs to Make Ends Meet. A New Exhibition Makes the Case that Side Gigs Also Fuel Creativity

Austin American-Statesman, ‘Day Job’s brings Andy Warhol and Whataburger to the Blanton

Glasstire, People Like Us: ‘Day Jobs’ at the Blanton Museum of Art

Monocle Radio, Give up the day job?

Sightlines, At the Blanton, the exhibition ‘Day Jobs’ reveal stories of how artists work beyond their artwork

Smithsonian Magazine, How Artists’ Day Jobs Shape Their Craft

Texas Monthly, In a New Exhibit, Artists Find the Sublime at Whataburger and the Supreme Court

The Art Newspaper, How artists’ day jobs can have a big impact on their art

The Baffler, The Art of Work

The New York Times, Why Is a Day Jobs Seen as the Mark of an Artist’s Failure?

Tribeza, The Blanton’s New Exhibition Shines Light on Artist’s Day Jobs

Feature Image Credit

Violette Bule, Dream America, 2015, Chromogenic print, 35 x 55 in, Collection of the artist