Agenda - Parks and Recreation Commission - 01/09/2025

Home

Up until the Great Depression era (1929-1942), government support for the arts was minimal in the United States. In the early 19th century, a minimal amount of federal support was used to subsidize public projects like Luigi Perisco's statues of justice, American and Hope for the Capitol, and Thomas Crawford's Status of Freedom (Miles 1989; Fyrd 1992). The Great Depression saw the advent of massive federal programs, some of which directly, or indirectly, supported public arts. President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal called upon artists to use their talents to serve the country. This was the country's first large-scale investment into arts and culture, and resulted in a succession of programs from 1933 to 1942. It was during this time that the federal government supplied funds to hire artists that would create works that would help to heal and inspire a society that was suffering the wounds of a great economic depression. Many of the artists were unemployed workers that could use their artistic skills for the good of society, and were provided work through work relief programs or direct commissions from the government (federal, state, or municipal) using federal money. Artists from across the country filled public spaces with murals, sculptures, and site amenities among other art and architectural forms (Kennedy 2009). The first of the New Deal programs to address art was the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP 1933), directed by Edward Bruce (Palmer 2012). This program focused on providing a consistent and respectable general wage to artists to create new works for public buildings such as schools, libraries, and orphanages. Another program that supported the arts was the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), also created in 1933. This program provided federal grants to state and local governments, many used to support public art and cultural projects. The New Deal committed to large art programs as a way to help the people through the Depression by giving them meaningful and hopeful communal (and government) symbols (Park 45