Editing Federal Art Project (section)

==Background==

{{See also|Works Progress Administration|Federal Project Number One}}
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| caption1 = Poster summarizing Federal Art Project employment and activities (November&nbsp;1, 1936)
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The Federal Art Project was the visual arts arm of Federal Project Number One, a program of the Works Progress Administration, which was intended to provide employment for struggling artists during the Great Depression. Funded under the [[Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935]], it operated from August 29, 1935, until June 30, 1943. It was created as a relief measure to employ artists and artisans to create murals, easel paintings, sculpture, graphic art, posters, photographs, Index of American Design documentation, museum and theatre scenic design, and arts and crafts. The Federal Art Project operated community art centers throughout the country where craft workers and artists worked, exhibited, and educated others.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/images/detail/employment-and-activities-poster-wpas-federal-art-project-11772 |title=Employment and Activities poster for the WPA's Federal Art Project, 1936|website=Archives of American Art |publisher=[[Smithsonian Institution]] |access-date=2015-06-16 }}</ref> The project created more than 200,000 separate works, some of them remaining among the most significant pieces of public art in the country.<ref name="Kalfatovic">{{cite book |last=Kalfatovic |first=Martin R. |date=1994 |title=The New Deal Fine Arts Projects: A Bibliography, 1933–1992 |url=https://archive.org/details/newdealfineartsp00kalf |location=Metuchen, N.J. |publisher=Scarecrow Press |isbn=0-8108-2749-2 |access-date=2015-06-17 }}</ref>

The Federal Art Project's primary goals were to employ out-of-work artists and to provide art for nonfederal municipal buildings and public spaces. Artists were paid $23.60 a week; tax-supported institutions such as schools, hospitals, and public buildings paid only for materials.<ref name="NYT American Murals">{{cite news |last=Brenner |first=Anita |date=April 10, 1938 |title=America Creates American Murals |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1938/04/10/archives/american-creates-american-murals-to-bid-for-the-favor-of-a-new-mass.html |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=2015-06-16 }}</ref> The work was divided into art production, art instruction, and art research. The primary output of the art-research group was the Index of American Design, a mammoth and comprehensive study of American material culture.

As many as 10,000 artists were commissioned to produce work for the WPA Federal Art Project,<ref name="Brian Naylor"/> the largest of the New Deal art projects. Three comparable but distinctly separate New Deal art projects were administered by the [[United States Department of the Treasury]]: the [[Public Works of Art Project]] (1933–1934), the [[Section of Painting and Sculpture]] (1934–1943), and the [[Treasury Relief Art Project]] (1935–1938).<ref name="GSA Inventory Project">{{cite web |url=http://www.gsa.gov/portal/content/101384 |title=New Deal Artwork: GSA's Inventory Project |publisher=[[General Services Administration]] |access-date=2015-06-16 |archive-date=2017-07-20 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170720013035/https://www.gsa.gov/portal/content/101384 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

The WPA program made no distinction between [[Representation (arts)|representational]] and [[Abstraction#Abstraction in art|nonrepresentational]] art. [[Abstract art|Abstraction]] had not yet gained favor in the 1930s and 1940s, so was virtually unsalable. As a result, the Federal Art Project supported such iconic artists as [[Jackson Pollock]] before their work could earn them income.<ref>Atkins, Robert (1993). ''ArtSpoke: A Guide to Modern Ideas, Movements, and Buzzwords, 1848-1944''. [[Abbeville Publishing Group|Abbeville Press]].  {{ISBN|978-1-55859-388-6}}.</ref>

One particular success was the Milwaukee Handicraft Project, which started in 1935 as an experiment that employed 900 people who were classified as unemployable due to their age or disability.<ref name="When Art Worked"/>{{Rp|164}} The project came to employ about 5,000 unskilled workers, many of them women and the long-term unemployed. Historian [[John Gurda]] observed that the city's unemployment hovered at 40% in 1933. "In that year," he said, "53 percent of Milwaukee's property taxes went unpaid because people just could not afford to make the tax payments."<ref name="Handicraft WPR">{{cite web |url=http://www.wpr.org/depression-era-milwaukee-handicraft-project-put-thousands-people-work |title=Depression-Era Milwaukee Handicraft Project Put Thousands of People to Work|last=Whaley |first=K. P. |date=April 30, 2014 |website=The Kathleen Dunn Show |publisher=[[Wisconsin Public Radio]] |access-date=2015-11-29}}</ref> Workers were taught bookbinding, block printing, and design, which they used to create handmade art books and children's books. They produced toys, dolls,<ref name="MOWA">{{cite web |url=http://www.wisconsinart.org/archives/affiliation/wpa-milwaukee-handicraft-project-109.aspx |title=WPA – Milwaukee Handicraft Project |publisher=[[Museum of Wisconsin Art]] |access-date=2015-11-29 |archive-date=2015-12-08 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151208134332/http://www.wisconsinart.org/archives/affiliation/wpa-milwaukee-handicraft-project-109.aspx |url-status=dead }}</ref> theatre costumes, quilts,<ref name="Handicraft WPR"/> rugs, draperies, wall hangings, and furniture that were purchased by schools, hospitals,<ref name="When Art Worked"/>{{Rp|164}} and municipal organizations<ref name="My Day November 13">{{cite web |url=https://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1936&_f=md054487 |last=Roosevelt |first=Eleanor |author-link=Eleanor Roosevelt |date=November 13, 1936 |title=My Day |website=Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project |publisher=[[The George Washington University]] |access-date=2015-06-16 }}</ref> for the cost of materials only.<ref name="UWM">{{cite web |url=https://www4.uwm.edu/eti/wpamilw.htm |title=WPA Milwaukee Handicraft Project |website=School of Continuing Education, Employment and Training Institute |publisher=[[University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee]] |access-date=2015-11-29 |archive-date=2019-11-02 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191102154325/http://www4.uwm.edu/eti/wpamilw.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> In 2014, when the [[Museum of Wisconsin Art]] mounted an exhibition of items created by the Milwaukee Handicraft Project, furniture from it was still being used at the [[Milwaukee Public Library]].<ref name="Handicraft WPR"/>

[[Holger Cahill]] was national director of the Federal Art Project. Other administrators included [[Audrey McMahon]], director of the New York Region (New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia); [[Clement Haupers|Clement B. Haupers]], director for Minnesota;<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/07wpa.php |title=WPA Art Project |website=Library |publisher=[[Minnesota Historical Society]] |access-date=2015-11-29}}</ref> George Godfrey Thorp (Illinois),<ref>Smithsonian. Archives of American Art. [https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/george-godfrey-thorp-papers-5770 George Godfrey Thorp papers, 1941–1970]</ref> and [[Robert Bruce Inverarity]], director for Washington. Regional New York supervisors of the Federal Art Project have included sculptor William Ehrich (1897–1960) of the Buffalo Unit (1938–1939), project director of the [[Buffalo Zoo]] expansion.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://ehrich.us/biography.html|title=William Ernst Ehrich Biography|last=Ehrich|first=Nancy and Roger|access-date=17 August 2018}}</ref>