Art and WPA: A Vanishing Heritage

During the Depression, employment rose to 32 %. People were desperate. It wasn't just stockbrokers who found themselves out of a job. Companies folded, laying off all their workers. Nothing was being built--no one had the money. And as far artists--who had money to buy art? Most people didn't have enough money for food!

Once he was elected, President Roosevelt started lots of programs to put Americans back to work. Gathered under the Works Projects Administration (or the Works Progress Administration) (WPA), these programs doled out money to men and women who built roads, buildings, dams, and bridges. The government paid folks to cook and serve lunches to schoolchildren and teach adults to read. Some WPA employees wrote plays, compiled histories, and painted murals for a monthly, living wage (which could be around $35, in those days).

Roosevelt's WPA put about 8.5 million people to work--about 1/5 of the nation's adults--between 1935, when it started, and 1943, when it wound down.

A website called WPAMurals.com lists WPA artwork that was done in this program. Much of it was funded by the WPA's Federal Art Project, but other agencies paid artists too: the Treasury Dept.'s Section of Painting and Sculpture, Federal One, Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP), the Public Works of Art (PWA) and the Bureau of Public Art (BPA) for example.

Yup, that's where our government's love of acronyms started, in the 1930s.

The government put artists to work on all sorts of projects. Milford Zornes of California, now 99 years old, recalls painting water colors of whatever he wanted and thinking it was the best job he ever had. Others created posters for public health programs, tourism, or educational purposes. The Library of Congress' American Memories website displays dozens of these.

For big projects, like decorating whole walls in public buildings, artists had to submit sketches and compete against each other for the commission. Artists like Jackson Pollock, Ivan Albright, Moses Soyer, Philip Guston, Jan Matulka, Mark Rothko, WIlliam Schwartz, Chuzo Tomatsu, and many others worked for the WPA.

Murals are probably the most well-known result of these programs. An estimated 2,566 murals were commissioned by the federal government, many in post offices. The Harlem Hospital has preserved murals by Charles Alston, Vertis Hayes, Georgette Seabrooke, and others.Their website records extensive details of how the murals were created.

Diego Rivera was employed by the WPA to produce a mural at Rockefeller Center in New York, but he chose Vladimir Lenin as his subject. The mural was destroyed before it was finished.

Helen Lundeberg created a 240-foot long petrachrome mosaic of crushed stone in tinted mortar for a park in Inglewood. 70 years later (and two years after her death) the 60 panels of work were taken down, restored, and reinstalled in a new location (story in the L.A. Weekly, with beautiful pictures--some below).

For decades, the murals, posters, and paintings of the WPA were taken for granted. They weren't protected or maintained. In buildings, the art was often demolished as remodeling or rebuilding took place. It's only very recently that people and groups realized what treasures they had in this artwork.

Now, in many places, efforts are underway to save and restore WPA art.

Where can you see examples of it?

Besides the Library of Congress, WPAMurals, and other places listed above, collections of WPA prints can be seen online at these places:

• the Kelvin Smith Library.
• PBS' Antique Roadshow site dedicated to WPA art.
• Illinois State Museum's Depression Era Art page.
• University of Montana's WPA Art Collection

Or. . . you could visit your local post office or library and see if maybe it's been there all along.