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Home , Federal Art Project, Federal Theatre Project, Hallie Flanagan, Jack Levine, Living Newspaper

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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 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 put it even more

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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 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 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

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 , 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. ’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 ’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 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,

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especially those painted by its team had produced a compendium of and , 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 . Their (now housed at the ) bold, colorful art deco designs encouraged duplicated architectural plans of the Americans to explore national parks and nation’s most important structures. Teams historic sites, visit the Philadelphia Zoo, photographed and diagrammed each delve into art galleries, guard against building, taking pains to draw the diagrams venereal disease, enroll in the Civilian to scale so that the building might be Conservation Corps, enlist in the Coast restored or rebuilt if destroyed by fire or In 1943, its last year of existence, the Federal Art Project graphic arts section was transferred to the Office of War Guard, and celebrate the Four Freedoms natural disaster. Information (OWI), where it produced posters aimed at laid out by Franklin D. Roosevelt in his famed FAP professionals were equally attentive inspiring unity in the war effort. This 1943 poster issued by 1941 State of the Union speech. to detail in preserving vital and property the OWI and created by Austrian-born American artist Henry Koerner urges Americans to turn in used cooking fats to their The work was so effective that when records. The preservationists, archivists, local butchers for conversion to glycerin, an ingredient in Congress refused to continue the FAP, it and teachers of the Historic Records explosives. National Archives transferred the graphic arts section to the Survey inventoried and duplicated decaying Office of War Information to create posters military, birth, and death records; deeds; urging Americans to save tin, plant victory maps; old newspapers; and census reports, gardens, and buy war bonds. saving an irreplaceable resource for historians and genealogists. Index of American Design In what became one of their most valuable and long-lasting legacies, New Deal artists set out across the country to document centuries of American folk, decorative, and popular art and design. The result is the magisterial Index of American Design, now housed in the . To assemble the compendium, Federal Art Project designers, artists, and researchers traveled to thirty-five states to locate, paint, photograph, catalog, and describe the dolls, andirons, quilts, furniture, pottery, and other everyday items Americans used throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They took note not only of toys, door knockers, weather vanes, and painted figures guarding cigar A drawing of the Isaac Bell House in Newport, Rhode Island, A poster advertising an exhibition, at a Philadelphia store entrances, but also of the tools early from the Historic American Buildings Survey. The survey, part department store, of the Index of American Design. A team American home builders, blacksmiths, and of the Federal Art Project, re-created architectural plans for of Federal Art Project workers had traveled the country important historic structures like the Bell house, designed by to produce the compendium of paintings documenting farmers used to ply their trades. By 1943, the prominent Beaux-Arts architectural firm of McKim, Mead American crafts. It is now housed in the National Gallery of when Congress cut off funding for the Index, & White in 1883. The survey is now housed at the Library of Art. LOC Congress. LOC

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Moreover, FWP paychecks allowed Ralph travel guide project, Their Eyes Were C Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, John Steinbeck, Watching God, Tell My Horse, and Moses, Man Studs Terkel, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, of the Mountain. The Federal Writers’ and dozens of other master writers to finish Eudora Welty’s work as a photographer works that would change the course of on the guide provided both Project American literature. income and inspiration for her Mississippi- based masterworks. And the great oral The American Guide Series historian Studs Terkel perfected his signature During the Great Depression, tens of To reach a general audience, the Federal interviewing style while working for the FWP to thousands of writers, clerks, and researchers— Writers’ Project (FWP) sent field teams to create the seminal works Hard Times, Working, some of whom lived hand to mouth in the best forty-eight states, thirty major cities, the and The Good War. of times—battled long-term unemployment territories, and dozens of national historic As the literary critic Alfred Kazin noted, and the despair it fostered. sites to produce engaging, detailed, and richly the FWP “began by reporting the ravages of Between 1935 and 1943, the Federal illustrated travel guides. Its photographers the Depression and ended by reporting on the Writers’ Project (FWP) hired ten thousand explored major cities and worked alongside national inheritance.” Its projects (and other unemployed novelists, poets, academics, writers who, using materials collected by FWP work by writers it sustained) told American copywriters, journalists, librarians, preachers, researchers, reconstructed the community’s stories and enlivened American literature. recent college graduates, and writing history and provided interesting tidbits about teachers—in other words, white-collar workers its contemporary life. FWP drivers motored who thought they could write. Together, from one city to another carefully noting these writers produced more than 1,200 mileage, street signs, difficult turns, and works ranging in length from pamphlets to landmarks. FWP draftsmen used the drivers’ 1,100-page handbooks. More than 3.5 million information to create maps that showed Americans would read their work. travelers how to get from one historic site to To put a diverse roster of writers to work, another and one city to another. the FWP focused on nonfiction projects that The travel guide series, historian and Americans might find useful. Creating master architecture critic Lewis Mumford noted, was research works took more time than staging “the first attempt, on a comprehensive scale, a play, performing a concert, or painting a to make the country itself worthily known to mural, however, and the FWP soon faced the Americans.” Time magazine agreed, arguing criticism it was too slow to produce. Besides that the guides were “the biggest literary job Book covers from the American Guide Series, a collection of travel guides that enticed Americans to explore the rich this, not all FWP employees could write ever undertaken” and corrected the general cultural and natural variety of their country. The series was compelling prose. Many FWP projects did not public’s tendency “to whizz over the surface perhaps the most popular initiative of the Federal Writers’ stand the test of time. of their country, picking up such information Project. Its four most comprehensive projects, as they can get from signboards, gasoline however, made a lasting impression on station attendants, road maps, [and] Chamber Depression-era America and provided of Commerce handouts.” indispensable research material for writers, academics, anthropologists, and poets for American Literary Masterpieces generations to come. American Stuff: An Despite its emphasis on nonfiction, the Anthology of Prose and Verse soon became the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) changed definitive resource for the study of American American literature forever. Regular paychecks literature. The FWP’s oral history interviews received by soon-to-be literary giants—such of more than two thousand former slaves in as John Steinbeck, Richard Wright, John seventeen states provided unparalleled insight Cheever, Saul Bellow, Claude McKay, and into the complexity and tragedy of slavery. Ralph Ellison—gave them the sustenance they The Life in America series preserved American needed to write some of the major novels folklore and launched pioneering studies of of the twentieth century. Steinbeck’s The Zora Neale Hurston at Book Fair in 1937, dozens of urban and rural ethnic communities. Grapes of Wrath, Wright’s Native Son, and the year she published her celebrated work, Their Eyes Were Watching God. From 1935 to 1937, Hurston had worked as an And the project’s exceedingly popular WPA Ellison’s Invisible Man would have taken much interviewer for the Federal Writers’ Project, gathering folklife American Guide series introduced millions of longer to complete, indeed might not have narratives in Florida. The federal project not only sustained Americans to the history of local communities been completed at all, had their authors not Hurston, already a published writer, with a paycheck, but also deeply influenced her most famous novel, which centers on and either gave away or sold 3.5 million copies been on the FWP payroll. Zora Neale Hurston the life of Janie Crawford, a rural African American Floridian of its books. published three books while working for the in the early twentieth century. LOC

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D The Federal Theatre Project

When Harry Hopkins authorized the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) in August 1935, more than two million theater workers had been thrown out of work, half of Broadway theaters had closed, and regional theater was in shambles. By the time Congress shut down the FTP nearly four years later, it had employed more than seventeen thousand theater workers and put on plays enjoyed by more than a million Americans per month. Directed by the exuberant , the FTP sought to produce theater “so excellent in quality, so low in cost and so vital to the communities involved” that the dramatic arts would continue to thrive across America without federal support. To A poster advertising the first presentation of the Federal A poster for the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) Living meet this goal, the FTP reached out to new Theatre Project (FTP), The Royal Family, at the Waterloo Newspaper presentation Injunction Granted at New York Theater. The most significant federal theater initiative in the City’s Biltmore Theater, 1936. The Living Newspapers, audiences and offered both popular and country’s history, the FTP had companies across the nation meant to address current events, were among the most new plays targeted to specific communities. and produced some of the most inventive theater of the controversial of the FTP’s endeavors. Injunction Granted 1930s. LOC endorsed the newly formed radical labor organization the It staged productions in schools, hospitals, Congress of Industrial Organizations and sharply satirized community organizations called settlement leading business figures. It closed early.LOC houses, prisons, deserted warehouses, and any theater spaces it could afford to rent. Ten million Americans huddled around their • the Experimental Theatre staged “new any theater has ever built upon,” Congress radios to experience theater through the plays in new manners”; eliminated its funding. innovative Federal Theatre on the Air. Inspired • the Popular Price Theatre produced Yet in its short life, the FTP stimulated by these successes, dozens of cities and works by emerging playwrights; and wide American interest in theater, gave towns launched their own community theater • the , the most opportunities to directors and actors who programs. controversial FTP program, made would transform American stage and screen, In introducing the federal program, current events come alive on stage. encouraged new formats, widened the Hopkins had assured theater professionals subject matter treated onstage, and played that they would have artistic freedom: “What FTP actors performed plays in French, a key role in bringing art into people’s lives. we want is a free, adult, uncensored theatre.” German, Italian, Spanish, and Yiddish. The actor-director John Houston called it Flanagan took this promise to heart, creating A dozen cities developed their own “the most creative and dynamic approach five programs that encouraged American African American theater companies. FTP that has yet been made to an American theater to take on broader themes than puppeteers entertained Civilian Conservation National Theater.” ever before, while making it accessible to Corps camps. populations that had never been able to meet The FTP’s bold experimentation and Living Newspapers the usual ticket price. Within six months: its frank, sometimes satirical depiction of No New Deal arts program generated more current events soon drew congressional furor or congressional disapproval than the • the Negro Theatre staged classic and scrutiny and accusations that it promoted a Federal Theatre Project’s Living Newspaper contemporary plays with all African radical agenda. In 1939 the red-baiting House unit. Designed to spur audiences to debate American casts; Un-American Activities Committee exploited current policies, playwrights combed news • the Tryout Theatre helped playwrights the politics of a few actors to denounce the reports, presidential statements, and audition their new plays before major FTP. Despite Flanagan’s spirited defense of newsreel footage to reenact and comment producers; “the widest and most American base that upon the controversial decisions of the day.

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drums replaced trumpets. When the curtain went down, the audience exploded in thrilled applause, and critics raced to file mostly admiring reviews.

It Can’t Happen Here: Theater on a National Stage Nobel Prize–winning author ’s novel It Can’t Happen Here came out in 1935, just after the alarmingly precipitous rise of Adolf Hitler to absolute power in Germany. The novel features a charismatic American senator, Buzz Windrip, who wins the presidency and imposes authoritarian rule, using the army to silence his critics. Hollywood optioned It Can’t Happen Here but on further consideration deemed it too controversial for the movies. Lewis then transferred rights to the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), which would assure the work reached a truly vast and diverse American audience. FTP head Hallie Flanagan hired eighteen

A poster for a presentation of Shakespeare’s by the A poster for the Federal Theatre Project’s (FTP) production directors in eighteen cities across the Federal Theatre Negro Unit. The show, nicknamed “Voodoo of It Can’t Happen Here at New York City’s Adelphi Theatre. nation to create their own backdrops and Macbeth,” premiered at a theater in the spring The production opened a week before the 1936 presidential open It Can’t Happen Here simultaneously of 1936, dazzling audiences. It featured black actors in a election in cities around the country. Critics raved and reinterpretation of the classic tragedy that shifted its setting audiences were exhilarated by its message that alert citizens on a single night. Louisiana backed out, from the Scottish moors to the island of Haiti. A young Orson are critical to the defense of civil liberties. LOC worried the audience might recognize their Welles directed. LOC own elected officials in President Windrip (Louisiana senator Huey Long, like the Windrip character, was campaigning for the For example, when Triple A—Plowed Under African American characters, the program presidency on a populist platform offering combined the Supreme Court’s invalidation would mount dramas treating themes broadly citizens generous stipends). When Saint Louis of the Agricultural Adjustment Act with an relevant to African American experience tried to soften the script, an angry Flanagan unemployed, desperate mother’s murder of and cast black actors in roles traditionally canceled its production. Tensions mounted. her toddler son to indict rural poverty, young performed by whites. This was a revolutionary On October 27, 1936, a week before the audiences packed the theater and critics approach. Suddenly, African American actors presidential election, the curtain went up on penned mostly stellar reviews. could interpret characters written by William It Can’t Happen Here in Birmingham, , Not all provocative stagecraft escaped Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, and Oscar Wilde, Bridgeport, , Cleveland, Detroit, censorship, however. When Living Newspaper along with characters developed by African Indianapolis, , Newark, New York City, actors wanted to feature a goose-stepping American playwrights. Omaha, San Francisco, Tacoma, Tampa, and in Ethiopia, a play criticizing The first play staged by the Federal Yonkers. The play was a smash. Actors took Italy’s invasion of the African nation, FDR Theatre Project’s (FTP) Negro Theatre unit a dozen curtain calls in New York’s Adelphi intervened, saying foreign leaders should not was a dramatic adaptation of Shakespeare’s Theatre. Critics extolled its message that be parodied on the American stage. Yet most Macbeth, directed by a young well-meaning citizens who fail to defend productions continued unabated, stimulating (who later would receive international fundamental liberties are as dangerous to rural and urban audiences, and introducing acclaim as an actor and director). On opening democracy as a military coup. Flanagan was a new form and minimalist staging to the night, as ten thousand bystanders crowded elated. She told the press that “the first theatergoing public. the Harlem streets surrounding the Lafayette government sponsored theatre in the U.S.” Theatre, ticket holders packed the theater. was “doing what it could to keep alive the and the Negro Theatre Rather than experience the bleariness of ‘free, inquiring, critical spirit’ which is at the To fully include black Americans in federal the Scottish moors, they were transported center and core of a democracy.” theater, project leaders decided that instead to Haiti, where voodoo priestesses replaced But Congress was not pleased. Members of merely staging the few plays featuring witches, military uniforms replaced kilts, and could not decide whether the play was for or

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against fascism. The political press remained director and actor whose film credits include convinced FTP had some secret reason for Citizen Kane and The Third Man. Movie director A statement by the Hollywood Democratic Committee supporting Franklin D. Roosevelt in the election of 1944, staging the play so close to the election. would make the classic American his last. The traditionally left-leaning movie industry in Yet Americans saw the play in droves and films On the Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Hollywood supported FDR. His administration helped continued to support the FTP. Desire starring Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh, launch the careers of some stars with Federal Project Number One jobs, and itself made skillful use of both Congressional critics took note of the East of Eden with James Dean, and Splendor feature films and newsreels as vehicles for government public’s appreciative response and, after in the Grass starring Natalie Wood and Warren messaging, especially during World War II. University of voters resoundingly reelected FDR, held their Beatty. Actor would headline Wisconsin-Madison tongues. Three years later, however, when such films asFrom Here to Eternity, and Sidney the House Un-American Activities Committee Lumet would star in 12 Angry Men, among other attacked the FTP, committee members films. Playwright , meanwhile, argued that Flanagan’s support of the play would produce such celebrated works as The proved her commitment to subversive Crucible and Death of a Salesman. material.

Stars of Stage and Screen The Federal Theatre Project helped launch the careers of some of America’s most renowned directors, actors, and playwrights. Orson Welles, for example, went on to win acclaim as a multitalented theater and screen

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Martin Dies, left, and J. Parnell Thomas, members of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), on May 23, 1939. The committee had launched an attack on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, accusing the administration of widespread communist sympathies and calling for the resignations of such key figures as Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, Department of the Interior head Harold Ickes, and relief administrator Harry Hopkins. HUAC also assailed the E Federal Theatre Project as promulgating communist ideology, and it was partly through its influence that Congress defunded the program in early 1938.LOC Congressional Conservatives Attack

By early 1938, congressional politics and created Bureau of Fine Arts. The press and fiction written by FWP authors. When the personal tragedy had conspired to undermine most representatives disagreed. The bill was House Appropriations Committee met in early the arts program known as Federal Project defeated by a wide margin. 1939 to allocate funds for the 1940 budget, Number One. Harry Hopkins, grieving over Two members of the House Un-American it refused to fund the FTP and limited FWP his wife’s sudden death and battling stomach Activities Committee (HUAC), J. Parnell funding to completion of its travel guide cancer, resigned his position as administrator Thomas and Martin Dies, seized on the series. FDR, focused on securing funds to of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), negative press to argue that all the Federal continue the WPA itself, did not contest the which oversaw the arts units. Franklin D. One programs—the Federal Theatre Project decision. Roosevelt, meanwhile, shifted his attention (FTP) and Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) That night FTP actors performed away from relief efforts to defeating anti– especially—harbored communist and other Pinocchio before a group of New York New Deal Democrats up for reelection, subversive artists. They launched hearings children. As the play ended, the puppet, the vast majority of whom kept their seats. investigating federal support of radical rather than coming to life, lay in a wooden box When Congress returned, a few ardent New art. Using real and (mostly) manufactured engraved with the words, “Born December Dealers proposed making the Federal One evidence, HUAC indicted Hallie Flanagan’s 23, 1935; killed by an Act of Congress, June programs permanent as part of a to-be- Living Theatre program and much of the 30, 1939.”

II. Hope, Recovery, Reform: The Great Depression and FDR’s New Deal 8. Work for Artists, Arts for America: Federal Project Number One