Bridgeport at Work: Muralist Robert Lambdin and Bridgeport Brass

Westport-based artist Robert Lambdin was renowned for his murals for local post offices, schools, and libraries completed under the Works Progress Administration (WPA). After the WPA projects were completed and World War II began, Lambdin and other artists needed to find other sources of work. Amidst a climate of war and labor strikes, Bridgeport Brass Company received massive contracts for war production and hired artists to illustrate powerful scenes of industry and labor to reassure workers and consumers alike.

Robert Lambdin and another Westport artist Ralph L. Boyer crafted imagery that celebrated brass production and the workers who made the company a success during the height of manufacturing in World War II. Exploring themes of advertising, truth, and propaganda, this exhibition presents Lambdin’s artwork for Bridgeport Brass within the context of the company’s balancing act between management and the workforce and Bridgeport’s long history of the labor movement and workers’ rights.

Image credit: Robert Lambdin, Study for section of Bridgeport Brass mural, c. 1940s. Courtesy of Black Rock Galleries.

Bridgeport at Work is made possible in part by the generous support of CT Humanities and Bank of America.