BabsonARTS presents
Deindustrialization
by James Hunt
Artist Talk and Reception: Thursday November 7 @ 5:00PM
Exhibit on view November 7-January 10, M-F 9:00A.M.-7:00P.M.
Hollister Gallery, Babson College

BabsonARTS is pleased to announce Deindustrialization, a new photographic series by Babson professor and photographer James Hunt.  The exhibition will open with an Artist’s Talk and Reception on Thursday, November 7 at 5:00PM in the Gallery.

Deindustrialization documents the once thriving textile mills that populated the Blackstone River Valley in central Massachusetts and Rhode Island. From Worcester to Providence, dams and mills were built along nearly every mile of river and its tributaries. The mills were icons of the industrial revolution, tended by hundreds of thousands of workers over the course of nearly 200 years who processed millions of tons of textiles, generating vast wealth for some. Most mill workers and the enslaved peoples and sharecroppers who grew the cotton did not share in that wealth.  The Mills had a powerful impact on Blackstone River, which by the 1970’s was described as one of most polluted rivers in the US. As work and money went elsewhere, the mills slowly emptied, monuments to economic cycles of boom and bust, now abandoned, burned, repurposed, or left waiting.  This series of images is intended to convey the spirit and hazards of “boom and bust” economics and raise questions regarding the costs incurred by industrialization without consideration of the long-term impacts.

Artist’s Website: https://www.jameshuntphotography.com/

James Hunt is a fine art and environmental photographer.  His artwork explores the interface between society and the environment, and the tension within that relationship.  He studied photography at the Boston University Center for Ditgital Imaging Arts as well as the Griffin Museum of Photography and the International Center of Photography.  James is also associate professor of management at Babson, where he has taught for the past twenty-three years. He received a doctorate in business administration from the Boston University Graduate School of Management and is co-author of The Coaching Manager: Developing Top Talent in business.

BabsonARTS presents visual and performing arts events and exhibitions at the Sorenson Center for the Arts and other venues on the campus of Babson College in Wellesley, MA.  Program offerings include visiting artists, performers, and speakers; as well as the work of Babson’s faculty-led and student-led groups.  The mission of BabsonARTS is to serve the educational needs of students, to provide cultural avenues to the residents of communities surrounding the campus, and to explore the connections among entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity through the arts.

For more information call 781.239.5880, or visit www.babsonarts.org.