CETA Artists Project (NYC)

CETA Artists Project (Cultural Council Foundation 1978-80) new article content ... In New York City, during the period 1978-1980, more than 500 artists - visual, performing, and literary - were employed through the federal Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA). The largest project, with 300 artists, was administered by the nonprofit Cultural Council Foundation (CCF). Four other nonprofit institutions - Hospital Audiences, La Mama ETC, the American Jewish Congress and the Theater for the Forgotten - each oversaw an additional 50 artists in independent projects.

More than four-thousand artists in total were employed nationally, in cities of all sizes. (The very first CETA artists project was created in San Francisco.) CETA - through its Title VI category - provided funds for the largest federal arts employment effort since the Great Depression’s Works Progress Administration (WPA).

The CETA program, which had started modestly in 1974, expanded rapidly in the mid-1970s in the face of continued unemployment. It reached a peak budget of $12 billion in the late 1970s, after the election of Jimmy Carter. By adding a category for "cyclically unemployed" professionals (Title VI) CETA became a source of funding for the employment of artists. Upon the annoucement of the NYC CCF project in late 1977, more than 4000 artists applied for the 300 available positions. To be eligible, they had to demonstrate both their accomplishment as artists (through reviews by professional panels) and the fact that they had received virtually no income in the previous year. The project paid participants $10,000 per year, with benefits (seen as a very generous salary by artists at the time). They were assigned to work in community and project assignments four days per week; the fifth day was meant to be used for studio time and self-initiated projects. Interestingly, two of the artists hired, Herman Cherry and Joseph Delaney, had been in the WPA project forty years earlier.

CCF itself directly oversaw most of the artists in its project, but others reported to one of seven subcontractors: the Association of American Dance Companies, Jazzmobile, the Brooklyn Philharmonia, the Association of Hispanic Arts, the Black Theater Alliance, the Foundation for Independent Video and Film. The Foundation for the Community of Artists, because of its orientation towards news reporting (it published the Artworkers News, later renamed Art & Artists) was charged with operating a seven-member documentation unit made up of photographers, writers and an archivist.

The NYC arts establishment was generally supportive of the CETA artists projects. One of the most visible figures was the city's relatively new commissioner of cultural affairs, Henry Geldzahler (appointed by mayor Ed Koch in 1977). Geldzahler appeared at many project events and spoke at one of its regular meetings (at which the artists were updated on project issues and given their paychecks).

The majority of artists were assigned directly to community organizations. Others worked in media-specific teams (such as FIVF's film crews) or in performing companies (such as the Black Theater Alliance). Some were commissioned to do public works such as murals. A group of writers and poets became the mobile "Words to Go" troupe.

CCF’s contract (from the New York City Department of Labor) called for the artists to engage in “classes, workshops and master classes, lectures and demonstrations, consultancies, design services, literary services, theater services, performances, creation of new works (such as murals, dances, plays), residencies and exhibitions.” Minimum numbers were specified for each activity. Among the community organizations requesting one or more CETA artists were schools, cultural centers and museums, community centers, senior centers, civic and historical associations, city and borough agencies. The CCF project more than met its contractual obligations during its first year, doubling the expected performance in most categories. When it was reauthorized for 1979, the number of funded artists was increased from 300 to 325.

Almost forty years later, only a few CETA public art projects remain. Most visible among these are two ceramic murals in Brooklyn’s Clark Street subway station. (The artists were Johan Selenraad and Alan Samalin; realization in ceramic was by Joe Stallone). Two successful and popular murals installed in the World Trade Center’s PATH station were destroyed along with the towers in the September 11, 2001 attack. The Archives of the City of New York houses historical materials from and about the project.

Numerous artists employed in the CCF project went on to successful careers. Among them: sculptors Ursula Von Rydingsvaard, Christy Rupp and James Biederman; painters Hunt Slonem and Willie Birch; photographic artist Dawoud Bey; filmmaker and TV producer Marc Levin; poets Bob Holman and Pedro Pietri; dancers Martha Bowers and Vic Stornant. Some of the project’s administrators also achieved subsequent success: project director Rochelle Slovin became the founding director of the Museum of the Moving Image; coordinator Liz Thompson became the director of the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival and later of the Lower Manhatan Cultural Council; coordinator Blondell Cummings gained fame as a dancer/choreographer, and coordinator Suzanne Randolph became a widely recognized arts consultant.

Several times during the project, CETA artists demonstrated publicly both to support continued CETA funding at the federal level and to urge the City of New York to extend its contract with CCF. Nevertheless, by the beginning of 1980, CETA funding was disappearing and the CCF Artists Project was forced to close. One of its last acts was the publication of the book Artists Project: on the documentation and utilization of largely untapped resources, which thoroughly documents the history of the project. Many of its images were made by the three photographers of the documentation unit, George Malave, Blaise Tobia and Sarah Wells.

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