Greetings,
I’m writing to announce the free Living New Deal webinar “Hidden Histories: Rediscovering the Federal Art Project at the Saint Louis Art Museum” at 5 PM Pacific Standard Time on Tuesday, February 4, 2025.
To register, click on the link below
We invite you to join us for a webinar with John Ott, Professor of Art History at James Madison University, and Amy Torbert, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Associate Curator of American Art at the Saint Louis Art Museum and co-curator of the current exhibition The Work of Art: The Federal Art Project, 1935–1943. Their conversation will offer a behind-the-scenes look at the planning process for this show, relate forgotten and untold stories from our nation’s artistic past, and illuminate neglected contributions from women, immigrant, and minority artists.
Co-curated with Clare Kobasa, SLAM’s associate curator of prints, drawings, and photographs, The Work of Art presents a remarkable collection of artworks created amidst the hardship of the Great Depression. In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched a series of national initiatives for the visual arts as part of the New Deal. The largest and most ambitious program, the Federal Art Project (FAP) (1935–43), put more than 10,000 artists on the federal rolls. The resulting artworks decorated municipal spaces, toured the nation in travelling shows, and eventually found homes in institutions across the country.
When the FAP ended in 1943, the Saint Louis Art Museum received a trove of 256 prints, drawings, watercolors, and paintings. This exhibition draws from this rich collection to explore how this federal program expanded opportunities to create and encounter art in many different communities, some of which had historically lacked the necessary infrastructure and support for the arts. By displaying work made by African American, Asian American, female-identifying, and immigrant artists, The Work of Art testifies to and keeps alive the New Deal’s ambition to nourish individuals and communities of every kind through the arts. Organized by geography, this showcase also reveals the complexities of the nation’s creative landscapes and art’s capacity to bridge communities near and far.
ACRAH 