The History, Art, and Design of Linoleum (In-Person)

Never Before, Forever: The History, Art, and Design of Linoleum (in-Person )

With Professor Christina P. Day

Tuesday, March 28th, 2023, 6:00 pm

This will be both an in-person and online lecture

Christina P. Day, artist, professor and researcher, will present a lecture on the history of linoleum and its arrival to the United States, as well as how it relates to her sculptural studio art practice. Professor Day’s research on linoleum began in a junkyard in 2015 while sorting construction debris at the art residency RAIR, located within the Revolution Recovery sorting facility in northeast Philadelphia, a site that receives 250 tons of waste material daily. Finding linoleum in this way, broken and without context, instigated for her a project to track how a common, fashioned material falls out of favor.

This lecture, part travelog/part artist talk, aligns her recent research completed at both Hagley Museum and Library (Wilmington, DE) and Kirkcaldy Museum (Kirkcaldy, Scotland) with Professor Day’s art practice. Her findings speak about linoleum’s origins, classism and the tastes of the times in which it was produced, its remarkable popularity and durability, images of factory production, advertising methodology, and how her artwork responds to the time captured in found material.

Christina P. Day’s art practice alchemizes roles related to material lifespan: designer, fabricator, owner, maintainer. She is based in Philadelphia, PA and is a full-time faculty member of the Fiber Department at Maryland Institute College of Art (Baltimore, MD), where her teachings focus on cloth production methods and experimental fashion. Recent art exhibitions have been held at Fleisher Art Memorial, Hesse Flatow Gallery, Whitesbog Village, and Mount Airy Contemporary. She is an alumna of the University of the Arts (BFA Crafts/Fiber) and Cranbrook Academy of Art (MFA Fiber), and has participated in art residencies at Sculpture Space, Vermont Studio Center, Haystack Open Studio Residency, RAIR, and The Studios at MASS MoCA. Visit for more information.

General Admission: $15 General Society Members: $10

Students: $5

Advance registration is required. Please note this is the in-person link.

www.generalsociety.org

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

The General Society Library, 20 WEST 44th Street (BETWEEN 5th AND 6th AVENUES), New York City, New York, United States