8. Work for Artists, Arts for America: Federal Project Number One Fdr4freedoms 2
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fdr4freedoms 1 The Depression hammered creative artists of all kinds—painters 8. Work for Artists, and sculptors, musicians, writers, and actors. Two-thirds of the American Federation of Musicians lost their jobs. Performance venues suffered a steep decline. Half of Broadway theaters Arts for America: went dark. Prices paid for paintings plummeted 66 percent. A majority of graphic artists hired by magazines were thrown out of work. Newspaper and book sales plunged. Federal Project Franklin D. Roosevelt’s favored approach to helping the unemployed was to move them off “the dole” and into government-sponsored work relief. So in 1935, he Number One authorized the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to hire jobless Americans to build visible, useful projects in their communities—projects like roads, bridges, schools, airports, and dams. Americans understood physical labor. But many were A New York City theater announces it will accept checks drawn on local banks during Franklin D. strangers to the effort involved in painting, writing, or playing Roosevelt’s nationwide emergency bank closure, March an instrument. “Are artists workers?” they asked. “Why not?” 1933. Performance venues suffered during the Great was FDR’s reply. “They are human beings. They have to live.” Depression as audiences dwindled. Half of Broadway theaters shut their doors. Work-relief administrator Harry Hopkins put it even more II. Hope, Recovery, Reform: The Great Depression and FDR’s New Deal 8. Work for Artists, Arts for America: Federal Project Number One fdr4freedoms 2 plainly: “Hell, they’ve got to eat just like other New Deal. And they set a precedent for A Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) presentation of Who’s Who people.” The two men launched the Federal government patronage of the arts. at the Zoo, an illustrated guide to natural history produced by the program, September 1938. FWP writers created more Art Project, Federal Music Project, Federal Federal Project Number One stands as than 1,200 works. Among the most popular were the travel Theatre Project, and Federal Writers’ Project, a testament to the vaulting ambition and guides that introduced Americans to different parts of their collectively known as Federal Project Number expansive values of the New Deal. It seemed country. Smithsonian Archives of American Art One, with the same basic goal that guided to proclaim that just because people other WPA units—to employ the jobless in stopped attending concerts or buying work of lasting value to the American people. novels in times of extreme want didn’t mean During their four-year tenure, these these weren’t vital to well-being. Invited projects dramatically expanded Americans’ to hear a free symphony concert or write access to the arts and created distinctively an original play, Americans could hope American art forms. They also became a for more than mere survival. They would not lightning rod for criticism of FDR and the live by bread alone. II. Hope, Recovery, Reform: The Great Depression and FDR’s New Deal 8. Work for Artists, Arts for America: Federal Project Number One fdr4freedoms 3 A The Federal Music Project The New Deal strove to bring live music to Americans who had not been able to afford the price of admission. FDR and work-relief administrator Harry Hopkins envisioned performances not only in traditional symphony halls but also in parks, schools, train stations, and other public spaces that could house a crowd. The Federal Music Project (FMP) embraced this challenge with gusto. Its musicians offered symphonies in concert halls, performed open-air concerts at ballparks, marched in parades, and regaled elementary students with cowboy songs. By fall 1936, they had entertained more than thirty-two million Americans, most of whom enjoyed their music for free or paid bargain- basement prices for tickets—a quarter or two for adults, a dime for children. The project’s musicians performed Beethoven, Brahms, and Mozart; staged Gilbert and Sullivan musicals; played Gershwin and swing music; and produced opera. They created thirty-four local orchestras and preserved American folk music. They copied musical scores and distributed them to public libraries and universities. Six thousand music teachers offered free music lessons and music appreciation classes to millions of children and adults. Classes were so popular that the demand for used pianos skyrocketed. Congress stopped funding the FMP in 1940. By then the project had introduced millions to live performances of classical music and taught many more to play an instrument and appreciate composition. A poster of the Federal Music Project (FMP) giving a phone number to call for information on classes. The program employed six thousand music teachers who taught music appreciation or trained students to play an instrument. The New Deal advanced the progressive idea that out-of-work artists were just as deserving of work relief as other jobless Americans—and like them could perform work of lasting value to other Americans. LOC II. Hope, Recovery, Reform: The Great Depression and FDR’s New Deal 8. Work for Artists, Arts for America: Federal Project Number One fdr4freedoms 4 B The Federal Art Project Artists, work-relief chief Harry Hopkins declared, have to eat too. With this in mind he instructed the Federal Art Project (FAP) to employ as many jobless artists as possible creating “art for the masses.” Hopkins, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Holger Cahill, FAP’s director, also hoped that “real depictions of real people in real settings” would sustain the American spirit and create a uniquely American style. It was a massive undertaking. From 1935 to 1940, the visual-art project hired nine thousand unemployed painters, sculptors, printmakers, and graphic designers, engaging them in the ambitious task of integrating art into Americans’ daily lives. Making a real mark on their communities, these artists: • created 2,566 murals for hospitals, town halls, schools, railway stations, and other public buildings; airports, hospitals, prisons, schools, public • painted 108,099 freestanding canvases libraries, city landmarks, and other public for government offices and other buildings across the nation. public spaces; New Deal muralists rejected the • designed thousands of bold posters comfortable, laudatory message of promoting public health, historic sites, traditional murals commemorating historic travel, and New Deal programs; events or celebrating national heroes. • staffed more than a hundred Instead they captured the toil and sweat community art centers in every region of everyday life, the struggle progress of the country; demands, and the dreams that democracy • taught hundreds of thousands to paint, offers to working people. They brought sculpt, and create graphic designs, to life “muscular men at work in field and as well as to interpret and appreciate factories, women tending hearth and both fine art and American folk art; and home,” contemporary street scenes, and • documented American designs, “magnificent machines,” as author Nick folk art, and historic buildings, and Taylor put it. preserved decaying historical records. Edward Laning’s The Role of the Immigrant in the Development of America, Their work allowed the nation to for example, transformed the 110-foot-long, Top: Edward Laning (seated) and assistants at work on participate in the expressiveness of art, 8-foot-high main wall of the dining room at the mural The Role of the Immigrant in the Industrial Development of America, January 1937. Sponsored by the as both makers and appreciators. It also New York City’s Ellis Island into a gripping Federal Art Project, the mural transformed the main wall documented America’s artistic heritage for portrayal of immigrants’ contributions to of the dining room at New York Harbor’s Ellis Island—then future generations. the nation, as well as the discrimination operating as a major immigration station—into a dramatic portrayal of the immigrant experience in America. Archives of they overcame and sacrifices they made to American Art WPA Murals build lives in America. Other murals, such Above: A poster illustrating the activities of the Federal Nothing symbolizes New Deal art so much as as Philip Guston’s Work—The American Way, Art Project, January 1936. This section of Federal Project the wall-length murals created by Federal immortalized the heroic effort brickmasons, Number One produced some of the bold, vivid Art Deco Art Project workers, sweeping panoramas garment workers, surveyors, and drill works—including posters, paintings, and murals—for which the New Deal is best known. Archives of American Art that became dramatic focal points for operators exert to do their jobs. Still others, II. Hope, Recovery, Reform: The Great Depression and FDR’s New Deal 8. Work for Artists, Arts for America: Federal Project Number One fdr4freedoms 5 especially those painted by Ben Shahn its team had produced a compendium of and Jack Levine, documented the poverty, eighteen thousand exquisitely composed, despair, corruption, and loneliness the true-to-life watercolor renderings of Depression brought to urban and industrial traditional craft objects—leaving the nation America. with an invaluable record of its artistic Together, the murals depicted America’s heritage, and offering latter-day artists, struggle to make democracy real for all its designers, and historians a compelling visual citizens. experience of the American past. WPA Posters Historic American Buildings Survey Graphic artists hired by the Federal Art The Federal Art Project (FAP) devoted Project (FAP) produced a treasure trove the same attention to American buildings of posters promoting New Deal initiatives and crumbling, moldy historic documents and advertising concerts funded by the as it did to American cultural artifacts. Federal Music Project and performances Its Historic American Buildings Survey staged by the Federal Theatre Project. Their (now housed at the Library of Congress) bold, colorful art deco designs encouraged duplicated architectural plans of the Americans to explore national parks and nation’s most important structures.