Team

The Labor Arts website is a non-profit 501(c)3 project, and relies to an enormous degree on the good will and generosity of contributors.

 

Core team

 

  Evelyn Jones Rich has been a public school teacher and principal as well as (Associate) Dean, Hunter College, CUNY, and an historian of African history. In retirement she served as Executive Director of The Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation . She is a co-founder and director of Labor Arts and a life long trouble maker and activist in the fight for civil rights, effective education, and for the rights of senior citizens.

 

 

 

  Henry Foner (1919 - 2017) was a retired labor leader, historian, songwriter and activist. He retired as president of the Fur, Leather and Machine Workers Union in 1988 after 27 years in that position. He has worked as co-founder and co-historian of Labor Arts since its founding in 2000. He served for many years as president of the Paul Robeson Foundation, as a member of the editorial board of Jewish Currents magazine, and as the editor of Work History News, the newsletter of the New York labor History Association. Foner was an accomplished songwriter, and with Norman Franklin, he  co-wrote the musical "Thursdays 'Til Nine," presented in 1947 by the Department Store Employees Union, CIO.

 

 

 Rachel Bernstein is a public historian who researches, writes about and teaches American working class history, with a particular focus on New York City. She is a co-founder and co-historian of LaborArts.org, taught in the graduate program in public history at NYU for decades, and works on public history projects with the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at NYU and elsewhere. She is author, with the late Debra E. Bernhardt, of Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives: A Pictorial History of Working People in New York City (NYU Press, 2000).

 

 

Advisors, Contributors, and Sources of Inspiration 

 

Esther Cohen writes, teaches, raises money, curates, art directs, and works hard to secure roses for every struggle. She was the former executive director of Bread and Roses 1199 SEIU, a co-founder of Labor Arts, and author of five books.

 

 

 

   Donald Rubin is co-founder of the Rubin Museum of Art and co-chair of the Board of Trustees, and he serves as the museum’s CEO. Shelley and Donald Rubin started collecting Himalayan art in the early 1970s and amassed a large and significant collection, a major portion of which was given to the museum to seed its nascent collection. He was the founder of MultiPlan, Inc., a major general service PPO health provider. He serves on the board of The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation and is a member of the Global Philanthropists Circle.

 

 

Technical team

Leon Miller-Out and his skilled staff at Singlebrook Technology  designed the site and continue to maintain it.

Maggie Goss and her talented designers at Goss Creative have been designing extraordinary exhibits for us since 2010.