Art for Hire:
Prints from the Minnesota WPA
June 30, 2009 – January 3, 2010
What does the current economic environment and Roosevelt’s New Deal programs of the 1930s have in common? Everything, according to a new exhibit at the Tweed Museum of Art. Art for Hire: Prints from the Minnesota WPA presents lithographs by Minnesota artists employed by the Works Progress Administration, 1933-43. Artists from all over the state participated, and received weekly paychecks to produce paintings, prints, murals, sculpture, and to teach classes and workshops. WPA programs did not dictate the imagery artists created, but these prints can be readily grouped into common themes. Some focus on the negative effects of the Depression – abandoned farms, unemployed workers. Others, like Henry Bukowski’s Road Builders, depict New Deal public projects that created jobs. The values of small town, rural and farm life are celebrated in other images, and yet another group of works is more experimental, based on European modernist art styles.
Tweed is not the only museum mining its collections for Depression-era material – as a recent exhibit at the Minnesota History Center proves. In light of the current economic crisis in the U.S., museums across the country are researching and exhibiting regional artworks funded by the Federal Government programs during Roosevelt’s administration. They are finding that the messages of these works – despair, hope, and a return to essentials – are fitting for our times.
Muralists, printmakers, sculptors and painters were paid to produce artworks which were then distributed to schools, museums and public buildings in every state. The prints exhibited by the Tweed Museum, for example, were first distributed to the Duluth State Teachers College in the 1940s; other local WPA print collections reside at the Duluth and Superior Public Libraries. Art centers were established to teach classes and organize workshops in art and music appreciation, theatre and traditional crafts. In Minnesota, these included the Duluth Art Institute and the Walker Art Center, which was revived by WPA funding after being all but closed during the Depression.
Soon after taking office in 1933, Roosevelt and Congress created new agencies including the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), and the Public Works Administration (PWA). Later initiatives included the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), and Social Security. Roosevelt’s initiatives formed the core of what became known as the "New Deal." Roosevelt’s New Deal acknowledged the fact that America’s well-being depended upon employment across all fields, and that the arts promoted positive thinking and nation-building on the heels of the Great Depression. While the Works Progress Administration / Federal Art Program is the best known, there were actually four programs employing artists between 1933 and 1943: the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) of 1933-34; the Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture of the Treasury Department (“The Section '94) of 1934-43; the Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP) of 1935-1938; and the WPA/FAP of 1935-1943.
Along with jump-starting the economy for unemployed artists and artisans, the WPA-era art programs exposed great numbers of people in all areas of the country to the original products of visual artists, writers, musicians, and professional theatre. The artworks of the Tweed Museum’s Art for Hire remain as important reminders of a watershed period in American history, one that is not so far away as it might seem.
