https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-8-2023
"You all are in trouble, because I am home tonight from ten weeks on the road
and am taking the night for myself, writing about one of the Very Cool Things I
learned in my travels. I expect there will be more stories along these lines in
the next several weeks.
Ninety years ago today, on Friday, December 8, 1933, in the first year of
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration, the Advisory Committee to
the Treasury on Fine Arts met for four hours in Washington, D.C., with museum
directors from all over the country and leaders from the art world. For the
past nine months, the administration had been building a “New Deal” for the
American people, using the government to help ordinary Americans in the midst
of the Great Depression.
Together with the Democrats in Congress, the administration had launched the
Civilian Conservation Corps that put young men to work planting trees, fighting
fires, and maintaining wilderness trails. The Federal Emergency Relief
Administration provided work and cash relief for unemployed workers; the
Agricultural Adjustment Administration boosted farm prices by reducing
agricultural surpluses, while the Farm Credit Act made it easier for farmers to
borrow. The Civil Works Administration put more than 4 million unemployed
Americans to work building 44,000 miles of new roads, 1,000 miles of new water
mains, and building or improving 4,000 schools.
Now it was time to help artists. Inspired by the 1920s public art movement in
Mexico in which young artists were paid to decorate public buildings, FDR’s
former classmate George Biddle suggested to the president that artists could be
hired to “paint murals depicting the social ideals of the new administration
and contemporary life on the walls of public buildings.”
This idea dovetailed with the goal of the administration to tap into the skills
of ordinary Americans in rebuilding the country by making sure people had work.
After all, FERA administrator Harry L. Hopkins said, artists needed “to eat
just like other people.” He promised $1,039,000 to be disbursed by the Treasury
“for the purpose of alleviating the distress of the American artists” while
decorating public property with world-class art.
At the Washington, D.C., meeting, the attendees discussed how to “carry…forward
the world of encouraging the fine arts as a function of the Federal
Government.” Their first speaker was First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who
“expressed her sympathy with the idea of the Government’s employing artists,”
and all the other speakers followed suit. The following Monday, the Public
Works of Art Project (PWAP) opened its doors, and artists lined up outside
government offices to apply. By Saturday, December 16, artists were receiving
checks. When the project ended four months later, 3,749 artists had been on the
payroll, producing more than 15,000 paintings, sculptures, and public murals."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
