Zum Inhalt springen

CARE! When Love Becomes Labour

05.11.2025 – 03.05.2026

Caring for and looking after other people, nurturing, educating and training them – all of this is now referred to as care work. These tasks, which are essential for the functioning of social coexistence, were and are usually performed by women, often without pay and often without recognition.

The COVID-19 pandemic has opened up a public debate about the ‘systemic relevance’ of care work. At the same time, however, it is often devalued or not even recognised as ‘work’, as it is not considered ‘productive’ in the sense of capitalist exploitability.

The Museum der Arbeit would like to take this discrepancy as an opportunity to address this increasingly important topic with a cultural-historical exhibition that focuses on the present, but at the same time shows the historical development of care work using exemplary activities.

In co-operation with students from the Hamburg University of Fine Arts, cultural-historical perspectives will be combined with artistic positions. Under the motto ‘Do you care?’, a separate interactive and participatory exhibition area invites visitors to actively and collectively reflect on questions of asymmetries, paradoxes and challenges of the current and future situation surrounding care work.