New Deal Art

A fresh and vibrant account of the USA's New Deal art programmes, highlighting diversity, activism, social justice, and urgent lessons for today.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s landslide victory in the USA's 1932 presidential election gave him a mandate to institute a 'New Deal' for US citizens, and by so doing offer them 'a more abundant life'. For a decade between 1933 and 1943 the New Deal art programs marked the largest federal investment in the arts in the history of the country. Tens of thousands of artists and artisans across the country produced some 2,500 murals, 100,000 easel paintings, 17,000 sculptures, and 200,000 prints.

How should we understand the history and legacy of the New Deal art programs today? Marshalling new scholarship and original research, New Deal Art highlights the contributions of a diverse range of women, immigrant, working class, Indigenous, Black, Asian, Jewish, Latinx and LGBTQ+ artists. While previous studies have focused on the personalities and politics of government administrators, this book offers a 'history from below' that stresses the role of artists as activists through collective efforts such as the Artists Union and the American Artists Congress. It explores topics that traditionally fall outside the purview of art history: art as therapy in prisons and hospitals, children’s art, community art centres and art education, and the place of handicrafts and applied arts. Above all, New Deal Art centres the question of art and democracy: What if art was treated as a natural resource to which all citizens had an equal right?

About the Author

John P. Murphy is the Philip and Lynn Straus Curator of Prints and Drawings at The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College. He received his PhD in Art History from Northwestern University, where he co-curated the exhibition The Left Front: Radical Art in the 'Red Decade', 1929-1940 at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum. At the Art Institute of Chicago, Murphy curated Flesh: Ivan Albright (2018); the accompanying digital catalogue received an Award of Excellence from the Association of Art Museum Curators. He is also a leading scholar on African American artist Charles White.