With the failure of President Herbert Hoover’s policies and the ensuing Great Depression, Americans were desperate for help. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s pragmatic New Deal programs aimed to help Americans back to their feet by providing them with jobs. Several innovative public arts program were designed to provide economic relief and jobs for all kinds of artists from sculptures to painters and performers.
Many American artists born between 1900-1915 were funded in their formative years by these New Deal public arts programs. More than 15,000 of them produced an estimated 400,000 works of art until budget cuts and political pressure from Republicans, combined with the outbreak of World War Two, brought the programs to an end.
The Public Works of Art Project (1933-1934), Treasury Relief Art Project (1935-1938), Federal Arts Project (1935-1943) and the competitive Section of Fine Arts (1934-1943) among others paid for the creation of public art. These were the first federal government programs to support the arts nationally.
According to Jody Patterson, author of Modernism for the Masses: Painters, Politics and Public Murals in 1930s New York (Yale Univ. Press, 2020), the Federal Arts Project was a means-tested work program. The Treasury Relief Art Project and a program that dedicated 1% of the costs of a new post office’s construction to acquiring art, were competitive.
As a result, many murals were installed at public buildings and parks around the United States during this period, especially in the many new public buildings that were constructed as part of the New Deal’s massive effort to restart America’s economy.
Some depicted the labor of ordinary working men and women, such as “Men Working in Slate Quarry,” painted for the Granville High School. It hung in the Town Hall from 1976 until 1995, when it was moved to the Slate Valley Museum.
Others are historic subjects, such as “The Exhortation of Ethan Allen” in the Ticonderoga Post Office. The mural depicts Ethan Allen convincing his neighbors to attack Fort Ticonderoga, the first successful military operation of the American Revolutionary War.
Many post offices around the United States still display these works nearly 100 years later, including in the North Country in Lake Placid, Boonville, Lake George and Whitehall. The Lake Placid Post Office paintings depict five winter scenes. A mural in Boonville highlights the Black River Canal, while the one in Whitehall is a Washington County’s agricultural history.
Most of arts programs’ portable art has been lost, but the U.S. General Services Administration has in the past maintained an inventory of known pieces.
Upcoming Event
“New Deal for Artists,” a film celebrating these unique government programs and resulted hundreds of thousands of pieces of public art all over the United States, will open this year’s film series at the Adirondack History Museum on Thursday, June 12 at 7 pm.
The 90-minute documentary film was originally made for German television by director/writer/producer Wieland Schulz-Keil. It premiered in the US on PBS in April 1981 and is narrated by famed director Orson Welles (1915-1985).
Welles worked for the Federal Theatre Project from 1936 to 1938. The film also includes such notables as Studs Terkel, John Houseman, Arthur Rothstein, Howard Da Silva, James Brooks, Nelson Algren and more.
The showing is part of the Adirondack History Museum’s film series.
Other upcoming films include: “John Brown’s Holy War” on Juneteenth, June 19, and two about the Revolutionary War”: “Liberty!” on June 26, and “Mary Silliman’s War” on July 10.
All films begin at 7 pm on Thursdays and admission is free.
The Adirondack History Museum is at 7590 Court Street in Elizabethtown, NY.
Illustrations, from above: “The Black River Canal,” mural in the Booneville NY Post Office; “Men Working in Slate Quarry,” mural in Granville; and Orson Welles in A New Deal for Artists.
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