Federal officials in the 1930s understood how essential art was to sustaining America’s spirit. During the depths of the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration created the Public Works of Art Project, which lasted only six months from mid-December 1933 to June 1934. The purpose of the program was to alleviate the distress of professional, unemployed American artists by paying them to produce artwork that could be used to embellish public buildings. The program was administered under the Treasury Department by art professionals in 16 different regions of the country.
Artists from across the United States who participated in the program were encouraged to depict “the American Scene,” but they were allowed to interpret this idea freely. They painted regional, recognizable subjects—ranging from portraits to cityscapes and images of city life to landscapes and depictions of rural life—that reminded the public of quintessential American values such as hard work, community, and optimism. These artworks, which were displayed in schools, libraries, post offices, museums, and government buildings, vividly capture the realities and ideals of Depression-era America.
The exhibition is arranged into eight sections: “American People,” “City Life,” “Labor,” “Industry,” “Leisure,” “The City,” “The Country,” and “Nature.” Works from 13 of the 16 regions established by the Advisory Committee to the Treasury on Fine Arts are represented in the exhibition.
The Public Works of Art Project employed artists from across the country including Ilya Bolotowsky, Lily Furedi, and Max Arthur Cohn in New York City; Harry Gottlieb and Douglass Crockwell in upstate New York; Herman Maril in Maryland; Gale Stockwell in Missouri; E. Dewey Albinson in Minnesota; E. Martin Hennings in New Mexico; and Millard Sheets in California.
Ross Dickinson paints the confrontation between man and nature in his painting of southern California, Valley Farms (1934). He contrasts the verdant green, irrigated valley with the dry, reddish-brown hills, recalling the appeal of fertile California for many Midwestern farmers escaping the hopelessness of the Dust Bowl.
Several artists chose to depict American ingenuity. Stadium lighting was still rare when Morris Kantor painted Baseball at Night (1934), which depicts a game at the Clarkstown Country Club’s Sports Centre in West Nyack, N.Y. Ray Strong’s panoramic Golden Gate Bridge (1934) pays homage to the engineering feats required to build the iconic San Francisco structure. Old Pennsylvania Farm in Winter (1934) by Arthur E. Cederquist features a prominent row of poles providing telephone service and possibly electricity, a rare modern amenity in rural America.
The program was open to artists who were denied other opportunities, such as African Americans and Asian Americans. African American artists like Earle Richardson, who painted Employment of Negroes in Agriculture (1934), were welcomed, but only about 10 such artists were employed by the project. Richardson, who was a native New Yorker, chose to set his painting of quietly dignified workers in the South to make a broad statement about race. In the Seattle area, where Kenjiro Nomura lived, many Japanese Americans made a living as farmers, but they were subject to laws that prevented foreigners from owning land and other prejudices. Nomura’s painting The Farm (1934) depicts a darker view of rural life with threatening clouds on the horizon.
ABOUT THE PUBLIC WORKS OF ART PROJECT
The United States was in crisis as 1934 approached. The national economy had fallen into an extended depression after the stock market crash of October 1929. Thousands of banks failed, wiping out the life savings of millions of families. Farmers battled drought, erosion, and declining food prices. Businesses struggled or collapsed. A quarter of the work force was unemployed, while an equal number worked reduced hours. More and more people were homeless and hungry. Nearly 10,000 unemployed artists faced destitution.
The nation looked expectantly to President Roosevelt, who was inaugurated in March 1933. The new administration swiftly initiated a wide-ranging series of economic recovery programs called the New Deal. The President realized that Americans needed not only employment but also the inspiration art could provide. The Advisory Committee to the Treasury on Fine Arts organized the Public Works of Art Project on December 8, 1933. Within days, 16 regional committees were recruiting artists who eagerly set to work in all parts of the country. During the project’s brief existence, from December 1933 to June 1934, the Public Works of Art Project hired 3,749 artists who created 15,663 paintings, murals, sculptures, prints, drawings, and craft objects at a cost of $1,312,000.
In April 1934, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., exhibited more than 500 works created as part of the Public Works of Art Project. Selected paintings from the Corcoran exhibition later traveled to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and other cities across the country. President Roosevelt, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and government officials who attended the exhibition in Washington acclaimed the art enthusiastically. The Roosevelts selected 32 paintings for display at the White House, including Sheets’ Tenement Flats (1933–34) and Strong’s Golden Gate Bridge (1934). The success of the Public Works of Art Project paved the way for later New Deal art programs, including the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project.
Nearly 150 paintings from the Public Works of Art Project were transferred to the Smithsonian American Art Museum during the 1960s, along with a large number of artworks from subsequent programs that extended into the 1940s, especially the well-known Works Progress Administration program. The museum has one of the largest collections of New Deal art in the world, numbering nearly 3,000 objects.
PUBLICATION
The exhibition was accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue co-published by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and D Giles Ltd. in London. It features an essay by Roger Kennedy, historian and director emeritus of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History; individual entries for each artwork by Ann Prentice Wagner, independent curator; and an introduction by Elizabeth Broun, director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
1934: A New Deal for Artists EXHIBITION SPONSOR
James C. and Virginia W. Meade
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM EDUCATIONAL COMPONENTS
FLICKR GROUP
The Smithsonian American Art Museum created a Flickr group to share the nearly 400 artworks and related objects dated 1934 from its collection. The group contains a set with the paintings on view in the exhibition, and images added by the public who join the group. Check out the growing list of images, comment on your favorites, or add your own images to the Flickr group!
Picturing the 1930s
This educational Web site, created by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in collaboration with the University of Virginia, allows online visitors to explore the 1930s through paintings, artist memorabilia, historical documents, newsreels, period photographs, music, and video in a virtual, 3-D movie theater. Visitors to the site can use these materials to create a documentary video and submit it to the virtual theater. New content will debut throughout the spring for each of the eight theme rooms—The Country, The Depression, Industry, Labor, American People, Leisure, The City, and The New Deal.
Also, you can explore artworks nationwide through the Mapping 1934 feature on the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s website.
