The Art of the New Deal: Why the Federal Government Funded the Arts During the Great Depression

It’s odd to think that the gray-faced, gray-suit­ed U.S. Cold War­riors of the 1950s fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism and left-wing lit­er­ary mag­a­zines in a cul­tur­al offen­sive against the Sovi­et Union. And yet they did. This seem­ing his­tor­i­cal irony is com­pound­ed by the fact that so many of the artists enlist­ed (most­ly unwit­ting­ly) in the cul­tur­al Cold War might not have had careers were it not for the New Deal pro­grams of 20 years ear­li­er, denounced by Repub­li­cans at the time as com­mu­nist.

The New Deal faced fierce oppo­si­tion, and its pas­sage involved some very unfor­tu­nate com­pro­mis­es. But for artists, it was a major boon. Pro­grams estab­lished under the Works Progress Admin­is­tra­tion in 1935 helped thou­sands of artists sur­vive until they could get back to ply­ing trades, work­ing as pro­fes­sion­als, or build­ing world-famous careers. Artists and art work­ers once sup­port­ed by the WPA include Dorothea Lange, Langston Hugh­es, Orson Welles, Ralph Elli­son, Zora Neale Hurston, Gor­don Parks, Alan Lomax, Mark Rothko, Jack­son Pol­lock, James Agee, and dozens more famous names.

There were also thou­sands of unknown painters, pho­tog­ra­phers, sculp­tors, poets, dancers, play­wrights, etc. who received fund­ing in their local areas to put their skills to work. “Through the WPA,” the Nation­al Gallery of Art writes, artists “par­tic­i­pat­ed in gov­ern­ment employ­ment pro­grams in every state and coun­ty in the nation.” As to the ques­tion of whether their work deserved to be paid, “Har­ry Hop­kins,” Jer­ry Adler writes at Smith­son­ian, “whom Pres­i­dent Franklin D. Roo­sevelt put in charge of work relief, set­tled the mat­ter, say­ing, ‘”Hell, they’ve got to eat just like oth­er peo­ple!”

He turns the ques­tion about who “deserves” relief on its head. Dance may not be nec­es­sary by some people’s lights but eat­ing most cer­tain­ly is. Why shouldn’t artists use their tal­ent to beau­ti­fy the coun­try, col­lect and archive its cul­tur­al his­to­ry, and pro­vide qual­i­ty enter­tain­ment in uncer­tain times? And why should­n’t the coun­try’s artists doc­u­ment the enor­mous build­ing projects under­way, and the major shifts hap­pen­ing in peo­ple’s lives, for pos­ter­i­ty?

Roo­sevelt, tak­ing many of his cues from Eleanor, spoke of fund­ing the arts in much grander terms than the prag­mat­ic Hop­kins. He elab­o­rat­ed on his belief in their “essen­tial” nature in a speech at the ded­i­ca­tion of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art’s new build­ing in 1939:

Art in Amer­i­ca has always belonged to the peo­ple and has nev­er been the prop­er­ty of an acad­e­my or a class. The great Trea­sury projects, through which our pub­lic build­ings are being dec­o­rat­ed, are an excel­lent exam­ple of the con­ti­nu­ity of this tra­di­tion. The Fed­er­al Art Project of the Works Progress Admin­is­tra­tion is a prac­ti­cal relief project which also empha­sizes the best tra­di­tion of the demo­c­ra­t­ic spir­it. The W.P.A. artist, in ren­der­ing his own impres­sion of things, speaks also for the spir­it of his fel­low coun­try­men every­where. I think the W.P.A. artist exem­pli­fies with great force the essen­tial place which the arts have in a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety such as ours.

In the future we must seek more wide­spread pop­u­lar under­stand­ing and appre­ci­a­tion of the arts. Many of our great cities pro­vide the facil­i­ties for such appre­ci­a­tion. But we all know that because of their lack of size and rich­es the small­er com­mu­ni­ties are in most cas­es denied this oppor­tu­ni­ty. That is why I give spe­cial empha­sis to the need of giv­ing these small­er com­mu­ni­ties the visu­al chance to get to know mod­ern art.

As in our democ­ra­cy we enjoy the right to believe in dif­fer­ent reli­gious creeds or in none, so can Amer­i­can artists express them­selves with com­plete free­dom from the stric­tures of dead artis­tic tra­di­tion or polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy. While Amer­i­can artists have dis­cov­ered a new oblig­a­tion to the soci­ety in which they live, they have no com­pul­sion to be lim­it­ed in method or man­ner of expres­sion.

He began the address with sev­er­al airy phras­es about free­dom and lib­er­ty; here, he defines what that looks like for the artist—the abil­i­ty to have dig­ni­fied work and liveli­hood, and to oper­ate with full cre­ative free­dom. Of course, artists, espe­cial­ly those employed in dec­o­rat­ing pub­lic build­ings, were con­strained by cer­tain “Amer­i­can” themes. But they could inter­pret those themes broad­ly, and they did, pic­tur­ing scenes of hard­ship and leisure, recov­er­ing the past and imag­in­ing bet­ter futures.

It could­n’t last. “The WPA-era art pro­grams reflect­ed a trend toward the democ­ra­ti­za­tion of the arts in the Unit­ed States and a striv­ing to devel­op a unique­ly Amer­i­can and broad­ly inclu­sive cul­tur­al life,” the Nation­al Gallery explains. Art from this peri­od “offers a win­dow through which to explore the social con­di­tions of the Depres­sion, the main­stream­ing of art and birth of ‘pub­lic art,’ and the open­ing of gov­ern­ment employ­ment to women and African Amer­i­cans.” Oppo­nents of the pro­grams pushed back with red bait­ing. Arts fund­ing under the WPA was end­ed in 1943 by a Con­gress, says schol­ar of the peri­od Fran­cis O’Connor, who could “look at two blades of grass and see a ham­mer and sick­le.”

See much more New Deal art–including plays, pho­tog­ra­phy, art posters and more–at the Nation­al Gallery of Art, the Nation­al Archives, Smith­son­ian, and at the links below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Yale Presents an Archive of 170,000 Pho­tographs Doc­u­ment­ing the Great Depres­sion

Strik­ing Poster Col­lec­tion from the Great Depres­sion Shows That the US Gov­ern­ment Once Sup­port­ed the Arts in Amer­i­ca

Young Orson Welles Directs “Voodoo Mac­beth,” the First Shake­speare Pro­duc­tion With An All-Black Cast: Footage from 1936

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness