Performance Artist and Little Girl with CETA Coloring Book, Hartford

Gift

object status: Accessioned object

Gift of Robert Gregson

Thursday is a Work of Art was a public art program in downtown Hartford that took place for eight weeks in the summer of 1977 and 13 weeks in the summer of 1978. Every Thursday, people who lived, worked, shopped, and socialized in the city were confronted with public performance art that changed each week. The art was sometimes political, often controversial and confrontational, and was meant to inject some life into the city center. It was created by Sidewalk, Inc., an offshoot of the Knox Foundation (a Hartford-based non-profit), and was funded by Knox, the federal Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), and local corporations, including United Technologies. CETA was a federal law that provided money to train unemployed people for public service jobs, and in 1977 and 1978, the state of Connecticut received $3 million from CETA to employ people in the arts. For two summers, Sidewalk, Inc. relied on CETA funding to bring its irreverent “art attacks” to people in Hartford, challenging them to interact with the city in unusual ways. The program was both loved and hated – the Hartford Courant covered it extensively, seemingly delighted by how silly and interactive it was, and simultaneously published letters to the editor in which people decried it for being trivial and making a mockery of one of its sponsors, United Technologies. In 1979, the CETA money had all but dried up, and United Technologies declined to renew its support of Thursday is a Work of Art.

curator approval status: N