economic crisis

This exhibition began as a way to save money in the Museum’s seriously eroded budget, a response to our own internal “economic crisis.” We
decided to forego two expensive temporary exhibitions and instead fill the galleries with permanent collection objects for ten months. Deputy Chief
Curator George Gurney proposed that we commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the first New Deal arts program, called the Public Works of
Art Project (PWAP). This seven-month program—December 1933 through June 1934—funded 3,750 artists who produced 15,600 artworks, at a
cost of $1,312,000. The enormous success of this program spawned a cluster of other New Deal arts initiatives, some persisting into the early
1940s. The Museum has 180 paintings made under the PWAP program, among more than 3,000 artworks from the 1930s in our collection. Dr.
Gurney selected fifty-five for this exhibition and book, and Curatorial Associate Dr. Ann Prentice Wagner researched each work and wrote entries
presenting newly recovered information. Dr. Roger Kennedy, author of a forthcoming book called When Art Worked (November 2009), who knew
key players from the New Deal during his own later government service, wrote an essay for the book conveying his passion for the ambitious goals
of the New Deal.
A glance back to the 1930s shows that many New Deal programs were innovative, even radical, in treating artists, writers, and playwrights as
workers deserving of support. This was new in America, where artists since colonial times had been considered marginal “extras” in our society.
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.” All that changed in the mid-1930s, as New Deal programs were
created for unemployed artists eligible for government relief. Artists, newly defined by their government as workers, produced an unprecedented
number of artworks, literary works, and theatrical performances, launching careers for many who became famous in later years. President Roosevelt
is said to have declared, “One hundred years from now my administration will be known for its art, not for its relief.”
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A capsule history of N