WPA and the Federal Art Project: Government-Sponsored Art During the Great Depression

The stock market crash of 1929 led to mass unemployment and homelessness in the United States, compounded by the Dust Bowl in the Midwest. In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president and launched the New Deal, which included the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1935. The WPA's Federal Art Project (FAP) employed hundreds of thousands of artists until 1943, funding murals, paintings, sculptures, and photographs that depicted American labor, industry, and rural life. Artists like Thomas Hart Benton, a leader of the Regionalist movement alongside Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, created lithographs and murals of Midwestern agricultural landscapes. Ray Strong's painting of the Golden Gate Bridge so pleased Roosevelt that it was hung in the White House. The FAP supported a diverse range of artists, including women like Doris Lee, Elizabeth Olds, and Georgia O'Keeffe, as well as Black artist Dox Thrash, whose watercolor "Untitled (Strike)" depicted a workers' protest. Jacob Lawrence noted that this period provided the greatest exposure for the greatest number of people through government involvement in the arts. The article also references the 1947 film "Crossfire," which mentions a WPA muralist, indicating the program's cultural impact.