Why WPA Art?

Art is cool

My wife and I like to take drives to small towns and find a hike nearby or walk the town. We also like finding jewels of restaurants in these small towns. Then we found another good excuse for these excursions, “post office art work.”

Back in 2017 we went to the Cascadia Art Museum in Edmonds, WA and saw the exhibit: Northwest Social Realism and the American Scene: 1930-1950 during a Thursday night art walk. It was about Northwest artists and their depictions of scenes of everyday life in the Northwest during the 1930’s through the 1950’s. Many of the works reflect the industrial, political and social aspects of the Great Depression and WWII period. There were pieces from the so-called “big four” of the “Northwest School”, Guy Anderson, Kenneth Callahan, Morris Graves and Mark Tobey.

We learned that they had painted murals in Post Offices for the Federal Art Project, 1935-43, which was one of the divisions of the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

The Federal Art Project had two goals:

• To provide artworks for non-federal public buildings
• To provide jobs for unemployed artists on relief

Federal Art Project artists were organized into 3 different divisions.

• Art Production Division
  • The production of artworks held multiple divisions:
    • Easel division:
      • This emphasized nationalism and the rediscovery of America in artwork subjects
    • Mural division:
      • The focus was on works for public places with regional differences occurring (e.g. Chicago for realistic American scenes, New York City for abstract murals, and California for Asian-influenced themes).
    • Sculpture division:
      • Here artists were encouraged to work in less expensive materials.
    • Graphic arts division:
      • It produced posters for the government.
• Art Education Division
  • The art education division included the establishment of community art centers.
    • Art centers as institutions devoted to community education rather than practical training were rare before the Federal Art Project
• Art Research Division
  • The Federal Art Project facilitated art research through the founding of the Index of American Design.
  •  Its goal was to make an historical & pictorial record of the daily life of American people.
  • They produced 20,000 index plates in six years of operation.
  • Specific kind of designs studied included:
    • Textiles & fiber designs
    • Glasswork
    • Ceramics
    • Metalwork like copper or brass
    • Regional varieties such as the Shaker materials in New England.

As many as 10,000 artists were commissioned to produce work for the WPA Federal Art Project. The project created more than 200,000 separate works.

There are 18 Post Offices in our state of Washington that have art work from the Federal Art Project  and small town restaurants waiting for us. Here are a couple links with more information and a list of post offices you can visit. The Living New Deal wpamurals.org