In the 1930s, the US was in the throes of the Great Depression, and Franklin D. Roosevelt moved into the White House with a sweeping job creation agenda. That included jobs for artists, and New Deal programs produced some of the most memorable American art in history.
Some 40 years later a very different president, Richard Nixon, was in the Oval Office, and he signed the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act. Just like in the New Deal, artists advocated to be included, and just like in the New Deal, they were successful in ushering a new era for public art.
An exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum — "Citizen Artist" — celebrates those two eras with works from the museum’s own expansive collection augmented by loans from institutions like New York’s Museum of Modern Art. All told, more than 200 works are on display.
“In the exhibition, visitors will see a wide range of media, works of art, created during these two pivotal moments in American history,” said Margaret Winslow, the museum’s Head Curator and Curator of Contemporary Art.
More than just art, the exhibition also highlights two milestones in the nation’s art history, said Dorothy Fisher, Lynn Herrick Sharp Curatorial Fellow at the museum.
“It's really exciting to look back at this history and see how much there is to learn from it, because it was a high water mark for support for the arts,” she explained. “Over 40,000 artists were supported by the Federal Art Project in the New Deal.”
While artists had to advocate for inclusion in the New Deal job programs, they ultimately succeeded, and that experience informed artistic advocacy more than four decades later, when President Richard Nixon signed the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act into law.
“When that legislation came online at the end of 1973, artists remembered the legacy of the New Deal programs,” Winslow said.
Those artists advocated for inclusion in CETA’s job programs, and just like artists in the 1930s were successful.
“Artists were able to pull on the history of the New Deal and develop and craft their own programs that artistically met the needs and interests of their communities,” she said.
But, Fisher noted, while the funding for the programs came from the federal government, the impetus for the movements came from communities and neighborhoods.
“What happens in both of these eras is that there's a significant change in Washington, but then it's implemented by people all across the country,” she said. “You're able to have the Public Works of Art Project and the Federal Art Project in Delaware because the Wilmington Society for Fine Arts is already organized, so the leaders of that program were easy to identify. And that happens again in the 1970s.”
Both movements were incubators for artistic exploration and the development of new, exciting styles, represented in the museum’s show.
“There's so much experimentation that's happening with the art, artists who are young people who are maybe in their first real job. They're finding their way aesthetically,” Fisher said. “There's so much diversity in ‘Citizen Artist.’”
The exhibition is on display through July 19 at the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington.
Delaware Public Media's arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
