HST 3103 America in Crisis, 1929-1945 Spring 2017

1. The New Deal and the Arts
HST 3103 America in
Crisis: 1929-1945
Kara Heitz

2. New Deal Goals
• Economic Recovery
• Job Creation
• Investment in Public Works
• Civil Uplift

3. Public Works of Art Project (1933-1934)
• Treasury Department
• Employed 3,700 artists
• Created 15,00 works of art
• Aims:
• Provide jobs for artists
• Create public art
• "American scene“
• Success = other larger WPA
arts projects
David Hicks Overmyer, KSU Farrell Library Murals; “The
Arts,” “Industry,” “Home Life,” and “Agriculture” (1934)

4. Coit Tower Murals
Left to Right: Victor Arnautoff's "City Life“, John Langley
Howard's “California Industrial Scenes”, Maxine Albro's
"Agriculture in California” (all 1934)

5. Section on Painting and Sculpture (1934-1943)
• Treasury Department
• Murals and sculptures for
government buildings
• Post offices
• Created ~ 1,400 murals &
~300 sculptures
• 850 artists commissioned
• Commission on artistic
merit not need "Country Post," mural by Doris Lee at the Federal Post Office
Building, Washington, D.C.

6. Section Post Office Art in KC Region
Right: Edward Buk Ulreich, “Indians Watching
Stagecoach in the Distance”(1937); created for
Columbia, MO post office; currently on display in US
National Archives building in Kansas City
Left: Gustaf Dalstrom (1941); St. Joseph, MO
post office

7. WPA Federal
Project #1
• Federal Art Project
(1935-1943)
• Federal Theatre Project
(1935-1939)
• Federal Music Project
(1935-1943)
• Federal Writers Project
(1935-1943)
John French Sloan, “6th Ave at 14th St” (1933)

8. Federal Art Project (1935-1943)
• Largest New Deal era arts project
• Employed 10,000 artists
• Produced 225,000 works
• Central goal: provide jobs for unemployed
artists
• Main types of programs:
• Creating art
• Providing art instruction
• Community art centers
• Notable FPA programs included:
• Index of American Design
• Posters
Top left: Florence Kawa, “The Workers”, (1935); wall hanging for the FAP's
Handicraft Project, in Milwaukee, WI

9. WPA Posters

10. Are Artists Workers?
• John Singleton Copley (1738–1815) complained
that he was regarded as “no better than a cobbler.”
• Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) lamented that “My
honours are misunderstanding, persecution, and
neglect, enhanced because unsought.”
• John Sloan (1871–1951) famously said, “The artist
in America is regarded as the unwanted cockroach
in the kitchen of a frontier society.”

11. WWII Posters