Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project
Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project
- Patricia Hills
The Federal Art Project (FAP) was the visual arts branch of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a government agency created in 1935 to find employment for people on public projects in response to the Great Depression. In December 1933 the ambitious Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) was set up to create regional offices to employ artists, with Edward Bruce of the Treasury Department as national director. The successful program employed some 3749 artists across the country, but it was phased out by the summer of 1934. (Bruce later headed other programs under the Treasury Department that employed artists.)
With the relief needs of artists, writers, musicians and theater people unresolved and with the experimental climate of the New Deal still energizing legislation, Harry Hopkins of the WPA set up Federal Project No. 1 in August 1935, which had the most far-reaching cultural impact on the country. There were four cultural projects: Art, Music, Theatre and Writers. For the art project, Holger Cahill was named national director and Audrey McMahon (who had experience setting up relief programs for artists under the College Art Association), was put in charge of the New York region. Under the WPA/FAP, artists were placed in eight divisions: murals, easel paintings, photographs, sculptures, graphics, posters, motion pictures and the Index of American Design. Funds were also available to staff workshops and community art centers with administrators, teachers and artists’ models, but not to pay the rent or fund equipment and supplies, which often came from civic groups or churches. Salaries varied, depending upon the position (artist or supervisor) and the consequences of cut-backs. For example, artist Charles Alston ’s pay ranged from $87.60 a month to $130.
At the height of the WPA/FAP in 1936, there were over 5000 artists on the project, many of them women, African Americans and other minorities, yet they were but a small percentage of the overall WPA. FAP artists produced some 2500 murals; over 17,000 sculptures, 108,000 paintings, 200,000 prints from 11,000 designs, 2 million silkscreen posters from 35,000 designs, and more than 22,000 plates for the Index of American Design. About two million children were taught in FAP classes. Artists were encouraged to paint “the American scene,” with nudes specifically prohibited. The FAP was continually under attack by politicians who believed that artists should not be paid by the government to make art, and in the late 1930s the rule was put in place to terminate artists after they had been employed for 18 months. The project was phased out in 1943. Most FAP artists polled by Francis O’Connor recalled their WPA/FAP years to be among the most meaningful experiences of their artistic careers for it created a sense of community and a purpose—to make art for the common people.
Unpublished sources
- Washington, DC, Smithsonian Inst., Archvs Amer. A., F. V. O’Connor Papers
Bibliography
- F. V. O’Connor, ed.: The New Deal Art Projects (Washington, DC, 1972)
- F. V. O’Connor, ed.: Art for the Millions (Boston, 1973)
- R. D. McKinzie: The New Deal for Artists (Princeton, NJ, 1973)
- M. Park and G. E. Markowitz: New Deal for Art (Hamilton, NY, 1977)
- G. Berman: The Lost Years: Mural Painting in New York City under the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project, 1935–1943 (New York, 1978)
- A. Hemingway: Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement 1926–1956 (London, 2002)
