On view in the Alumni Gallery July 25 – September 12, 2026, Aimee Koran ’13 presents Union Hall: Maternal Order of Makers (M.O.M.), a project that temporarily transforms our alumni gallery into the headquarters of a labor union for mothers. Part union hall, part workshop, part archive, and part organizing space, the exhibition imagines Koran’s caregiving union—one that is dedicated to the recognition of maternal labor as essential work worthy of visibility, solidarity, and collective power.
Presented as part of Radical Americana and aligned with Philadelphia’s 250th anniversary programming, Union Hall: Maternal Order of Makers (M.O.M.) draws upon Philadelphia's unique role as the birthplace of American democracy and organized labor. Just blocks from where the First Continental Congress convened at Carpenters' Hall—and where workers later organized some of the nation's earliest trade unions—Union Hall asks us to reconsider another foundational effort upon which every society depends: motherhood. Koran suggests, “if Philadelphia is celebrated as the birthplace of a nation, mothers are the birthplace of all of us.”
Through sculpture, installation, murals, banners, protest ephemera, union insignia, handmade objects, and participatory materials, the exhibition constructs the organizing headquarters for the Maternal Order of Makers (M.O.M.), an imagined union that advocates for the recognition of caregiving and creative labor. Visitors are invited not simply to observe the exhibition, but to enter the union hall itself and encounter the visual language of collective action.
The exhibition brings together works from several ongoing bodies of work—including chrome-plated domestic objects, pregnancy test flags, and labor-inspired sculptures—alongside newly commissioned installations that blur the boundaries between artwork, organizing tool, historical artifact, and political proposition. Borrowing the visual language of labor movements while drawing from Philadelphia's deep histories of craft, manufacturing, and women's work, Union Hall positions caregiving within a broader history of labor organizing and social change.
Artist Statement
At the heart of the project is the conviction that all mothers are makers. Whether making paintings or packed lunches, businesses or bedtime routines, sculptures or sandwiches, communities or cherished memories, mothers perform acts of creation that sustain families, economies, and culture. Yet these forms of labor remain largely invisible, uncompensated, and excluded from many of the structures that protect other workers.
Rather than presenting motherhood as a private identity or personal experience, Union Hall reframes it as collective infrastructure: a form of labor that quietly underpins every institution while rarely receiving the protections, visibility, or value it deserves.
At this moment of national reflection, Union Hall asks visitors to reconsider the stories America tells about work, freedom, and who builds the nation. Two hundred and fifty years after the country's founding, the exhibition proposes an expanded vision of patriotism—one rooted not only in independence, but in interdependence; not only in individual achievement, but in collective care. It imagines what becomes possible when the labor of making and mothering is recognized not as private sacrifice, but as public work worthy of organization, dignity, and Power.
About the Artist
Aimee Koran is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Philadelphia, PA. She holds an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and a BFA in Fine Arts with a minor in Textile Design from Moore College of Art & Design. Koran explores the topic of motherhood, focusing on the continuously shifting and complex binaries that shape the role. Her work has been shown around the globe in venues such as the Richard Saulton Gallery, London, UK; Mutter Museum, Philadelphia, PA; The Arlington Art Center, Arlington, VA; and completed residencies at The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA; The Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT; The Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY and Project for Empty Space, Newark, NJ. Her solo and group exhibitions have been featured in publications like The New York Times, Vogue, Whitewall, Artslant, Artnet News and A Woman's Thing. Koran's work was recently acquired for addition to the permanent contemporary collection at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.
Image courtesy of the artist.
