Public Works of Art Project

Employment and Activities poster for the WPA's Federal Art Project, 1936

Poster for a Federal Art Project forum in New York City, New York, c. 1936-1941, at which Holger Cahill was one of the speakers.

The Public Works of Art Project was a program to employ artists, as part of the New Deal, during the Great Depression. It was the first such program, running from December 1933 to June 1934. It was headed by Edward Bruce, under the United States Treasury Department and paid for by the Civil Works Administration.

San Francisco PWAP

The largest of the projects sponsored by the PWAP were the Coit Tower murals in San Francisco’s Coit Tower. The project became controversial because of the strong influence of Diego Rivera on the city's artworks, whereas the interest of the PWAP was to keep publicly sponsored art projects non-revolutionary. In 1933, Ralph Stackpole and Bernard Zakheim supervised the muralists, who were mainly faculty and students of the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA), including Maxine Albro, Victor Arnautoff, Ray Bertrand, Rinaldo Cuneo, Mallette Harold Dean, Clifford Wight, Parker Hall, Edith Hamlin, George Harris, Robert B. Howard, Otis Oldfield, Suzanne Scheuer, Hebe Daum and Frede Vidar. During the painting of the murals, the Big Strike of 1934 shut down the Pacific Coast. Though it has been claimed that allusions to the event were subversively included in the murals by some of the artists, in fact the murals were largely completed before the strike began.

Griffith Observatory's Astronomers Monument

Another significant project funded by PWAP is the Astronomers Monument at Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. The monument is a large outdoor concrete sculpture on the front lawn that pays homage to six of the greatest astronomers of all time:  Hipparchus (about 150 BC); Nicholas Copernicus (1473–1543); Galileo Galilei (1564–1642); Johannes Kepler (1571–1630); Isaac Newton (1642–1727); and William Herschel (1738–1822). Soon after the PWAP began in December 1933, in cooperation with the Los Angeles Park Commission, PWAP commissioned a sculpture project on the grounds of the new Observatory (which was under construction). Using a design by local artist Archibald Garner and materials donated by the Women's' Auxiliary of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Garner and five other artists sculpted and cast the concrete monument and figures. Each artist was responsible for sculpting one astronomer; one of the artists, George Stanley, was also the creator of the famous "Oscar" statuette presented at the Academy Awards. On November 25, 1934 (about six months prior to the opening of the Observatory), a celebration took place to mark completion of the Astronomers Monument. The only "signature" on the Astronomers Monument is "PWAP 1934" referring to the program which funded the project and the year it was completed.

See also

• Federal Art Project, a New Deal federal arts program operated by the Works Progress Administration which ran from 1935 to 1943.
• Section of Painting and Sculpture, a New Deal federal arts program also operated by the United States Department of the Treasury.

References

• Pohl, Frances K. (2008). Framing America. A Social History of American Art. New York: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-28715-6. 
• Contreras, Belisario R. (1983). Tradition and Innovation in New Deal Art. London and Toronto: Associated University Presses. 
• O'Connor, Francis V., ed. (1973). Art for the Millions: Essays from the 1930s by Artists and Administrators of the WPA Federal Art Project. Boston: New York Graphic Society. 

External links

• "1934: A New Deal for Artists" is an exhibition featuring artworks from the Public Works of Art Project at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. This site contains a slide show, public programs, and recent news stories
  • Public Works of Art Project, video
• Art Becomes Public Works – 1934 magazine article on the PWAP