Baseball, Apple Pie and Earl Browder

2007

Kansas born Earl Russell Browder (1891-1973) was a lifelong pro-labor populist who eventually became the head of the Communist party of the United States from1930-1945, and at one time was the Communist party's candidate for president. This installation presents a "discovered cache" from an abandoned house's basement – a host of artifacts and espionage ephemera that suggests the existence of a Browder-inspired pro-communist sleeper cell in Portland, Maine in the early 1960s. According to the text and artifacts, the underground group was intent on constructing and covertly placing within toy stores an indictment of capitalism in the guise of capitalist-themed toys so pathetic and despondent that children who received them would be inclined to see communist ideology as a favorable alternative.

This installation was featured at the Mulvane Art Museum in Topeka, Kansas in 2007.