Art and Muralism

Post Office Murals and Federal Art Projects in the New Deal Era

Fan Zhang

Ernest Hamlin Baker's The Activities of the Narragansett Planters is one of hundreds of post office murals created in the New Deal Era. [1] In order to help Americans recover from the Great Depression in the 1930s President Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated a series of economic and cultural reforms across the country. Under the New Deal policy, the federal government founded many art programs to create a heritage of American art and to help thousands of artists with financial hardship. The President and his supporters believed that the arts played an important role in promoting a positive attitude about the American past and future, especially during a period of critical reform.

The first attempt was successful but short-lived. In the winter of 1933, Harry Hopkins started federal art projects with an experimental program known as the PWAP (Public Works of Art Project). Administered by Edward Bruce, the PWAP employed artists and sponsored art nation-wide, but its funding was discontinued in the spring of 1934. More ambitious art projects were set up soon after the federal government realized that it was necessary to sponsor more enduring art projects to fight the long-term economic depression.[2]

The Federal Art Project/FAP (1935-1943), the largest art project undertaken by the federal government at that time, was under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration/WPA (renamed the Works Project Administration in 1939). This organization also administered other programs in all the forty-eight states, such as the Federal Writers Project, the Federal Music Project, and the Federal Theatre Project. With Holger Cahill as its first national director, the FAP conducted major activities including art production, education, and research.[3] The FAP had divisions devoted to easel paintings, murals, sculptures, and graphic arts (Figure 1). [4] It also founded more than one hundred community art centers for public education.[5] All these efforts contributed enormously to the production of American art in an era of economic depression. At the same time the Treasury Department directed two parallel programs in order to decorate federal buildings under its administration: the Section of Painting and Sculpture (1934-1943, renamed the Section of Fine Arts in 1939) and the Treasury Relief Art Project/TRAP (1935-1939).[6] Although these projects had different goals and administrations, they complemented rather than competed with each other. Together they formed a comprehensive national network designed to support artists and bring art to all Americans.

Most post office murals painted in the New Deal era were sponsored by the Section of Fine Arts, which was directed by Edward Bruce, the former PWAP chief.[7] The Section differed from the FAP in the forms of its patronage. [8] The FAP mainly focused on large cities and commissioned unemployed artists to create art for state and municipal institutions. It offered artists relative freedom and encouraged artistic innovation. The Section preferred works in traditional styles over abstract and avant-garde ones. It commissioned artists instead of paying them regular wages as the FAP did. By holding anonymous competitions for the contracts, the Section claimed to attract the best artists in order to realize its goal to provide "suitable art of the best quality" for the decoration of federal buildings.[9]

As a place most ordinary Americans visit in their daily life, the post office marked the physical and symbolic presence of the federal government in every community across the nation. The Section thus paid special attention to the decoration of post offices built in the New Deal era. In order to make the selection process fair, the Section held nearly 200 national and regional competitions, and also made decisions in consultation with various regional and local committees and juries. Only after the design was chosen were the names of artists revealed (Figure 2). [10] The section encouraged the commissioned painter to visit the town where his or her mural would be displayed, as well as to talk with leading residents and gather local history in the hope that the painter would complete the mural with enough reference from the locale. Baker, who lived in New York, made three trips to Rhode Island in preparation for the Wakefield post office mural.[11] To ensure the quality and timely completion of commissioned murals, the painter was paid in installments; commissions usually totaled seven to eight hundred dollars. Most artists painted on canvas in their studios and then had the finished works affixed to the walls in the post offices (Figure 3).

In order to accommodate the taste and interests of the local community, the Section promoted subjects with local themes rather than national events and heroes.[12] The majority of post office murals represent the early history of a locale or its contemporary life and industries. The Section avoided choosing scenes depicting tragedy or conflicts and presented a positive view of both the past and the present. Although themes are varied, all the murals were designed to promote the idea of a unified and positive American spirit during the Depression period. As we have seen Baker's mural pictures in the early history and industry of South County through a scene featuring fertile land, productive activities, and muscular laborers (see Economics of Empire). All these representations emphasize the reward and value of hard work, which was deemed crucial to putting an end to economic hardship.

For the federal officials in charge of the Section, the Wakefield mural had a wider purpose than representing the unique past of a specific community. Baker's painting and the hundreds of other new post office murals produced at this time formed a network of imagery that was supposed to promote the same set of national ideals and aspirations via scenes of local interest. By means of this network the "true spirit" of America would be revealed in scene after scene showing Americans (past and present) going about their daily life.  In this way, the federal government attempted to bring accessible, appealing art to its people, who would recognize their place in a nation defined by the ideology of the New Deal.[13]

 

Notes

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[1] More than 1,800 post offices were built in the New Deal era. Approximately 1,200 post office murals are now preserved in the Postal Fine Arts Collection.

[2] Marlene Park and Gerald E. Markowitz, Democratic Vistas: Post Office Murals and Public Art in the New Deal (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), p. 6.

[3] Richard D. McKinzie, The New Deal for Artists (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), pp. 82-89.

[4] By the end of 1943, 108,099 easel paintings, 2,566 murals, 11,285 fine prints, 17,744 sculptures, and 2,566 murals were made with the total expense of about 35 million dollars. See Appendix C: Physical accomplishments of FAP (1935-1943) in Francis V. O'Connor, Art for the Millions (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphics Society, 1973),  p. 305. For more details, see Belisario R. Contreras, Tradition and Innovation in New Deal Art (Lewisburg: Buckwell University Press, 1983), pp. 67-139.

[5] For the list of community art centers, see Appendix D in O'Connor 1973, pp. 306-7.

[6] The TRAP was more similar to the FAP and hired unemployed artists to decorate public buildings. The Section was not a relief program. It awarded commissions for murals and sculptures in public buildings on the basis of anonymous competitions. See Contreras 1983, pp. 51-57.

[7] For a complete list of all the Section and TRAP murals and sculptures created for federal buildings, see the appendix in Park 1984.

[8] Park 1984, p. 6.

[9] See Marlene Park and Gerald E. Markowitz, The New Deal for Art (New York: The Gallery Association of New York State, 1977), pp. 4-5.

[10] Park 1984, 12-15.

[11] See the introduction, Picturing History.

[12] For more introductions of the New Deal murals in the post offices, see Park 1984. It is a good way to group these post office murals according to geographical regions. In Democratic Vistas, Marlene Park introduces these murals in five areas: the New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the South, the Midwest, and the West.

[13] For the relationship between state-sponsored art and the national identity, see Jonathan Harris, Federal Art and National Culture: The Politics of Identity in New Deal America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 1-12.