BETHLEHEM, Pa. - An art exhibit at Lehigh University shines a light on Bethlehem's place in American history.
The piece was created by Shimon Attie, a New York-based visual artist. It is on display at Lehigh University Art Galleries and titled "Starstruck: An American Tale."
- Shimon Attie's "Starstruck: An American Tale" uses a smaller-scale Bethlehem Star and film to showcase Bethlehem as the story of America.
- The accompanying film features people from Bethlehem's eclectic cultural and industrial landscape.
- The exhibit runs until Dec. 3 at the Lehigh University Art Gallery.
The project aims to make the point that Bethlehem's history can be viewed as a "microcosm" of the U.S. story.
"Attie's project explores this distinctly American brew of religious utopian fervor," the installation's brochure reads. "Industrial capitalism's rise and fall, and finally, its reinvention in catering to the dreams of making it big on the part of casino goers."
In the installation, a smaller-scale model of the iconic Bethlehem Star lights up between two giant screens. The Bethlehem Star changes colors in sync with the videos on the two screens, which show a film production depicting some of Bethlehem's eclectic walks of life.
Characters in the film include a Bethlehem Steel worker, a casino employee, a nurse, a singer and a Moravian.
As the scenes of Bethlehem's economic boom and bust play on the screens, the exhibit's Bethlehem Star lights up in bright colors, spinning like a roulette table. The occasional casino sound blares behind Moravian choir singers.
Overlapping histories
"These characters kind of interchange with different communities," said Elise Schaffer, the coordinator of museum experience and accessibility for Lehigh University Art Galleries. "We have the choir members inside the central Moravian Church. And as the video continues, you see them start to kind of swap and interchange places, I think mostly as a representation of this concept of overlapping histories."
At a panel discussion held by the university and gallery, all the characters in the film had a chance to get together on an auditorium stage last week and talk about what the art installation means to them.
The cast members are not really "cast members" in an acting sense — as each one actually does or did the thing they are portrayed as doing, in real life. They all agreed that they had become good friends while working on the project — a family as a member even described.
One person in the cast was a retired steelworker named Guillermo Lopez. He had been a millwright at Bethlehem Steel for 27 years and is a first-generation Puerto Rican.
"Bethlehem Steel, for me and the people that I was close to, it wasn't a picnic," Lopez said. "It wasn't the memories that I hear a lot of people talk about."
Lopez said it was tough work for everyone at the steel mill, but Latino workers had an especially tough time with the stresses of racial tensions.
"The more deeply you study the history of steel, the more astonishing the scale of that exploitation is."Seth Moglen, Lehigh University professor and author
It has been documented that white workers at Bethlehem Steel had more favorable conditions than others but usually only in the context of comparison to Black workers.
Another guest on the panel was Seth Moglen, a professor at Lehigh who is writing a book about Bethlehem's history. He said Lopez's observations check out.
"The more deeply you study the history of steel, the more astonishing the scale of that exploitation is," Moglen said. "By exploitation, I mean something quite specific, which is the shockingly low wages paid to immigrants for 100 years. Subsistence wages. People [were] earning less than one dollar a day for a 12- [to] 14-hour shift."
Attie nodded his head while the two spoke and added that he hoped to paint a picture that represents the negative but not just a view of Bethlehem's history through rose-colored glasses. Lopez thanked him for giving him the space to convey his experience.
"Starstruck: An American Tale" runs until December 3, 2022 at the Lehigh University Art Gallery.
