A New Deal for art

A New Deal for Art argues that a new relationship developed between the U.S. government and the arts during the 1930s. The nation's financial crisis led cultural enthusiasts, reformers, artists, intellectuals, politicians, and lay people to demand that the government directly fund the arts. Between 1933 and 1943, the federal government responded by creating a series of art projects within the Treasury Department, the Work Projects Administration, and the Resettlement Administration.; A New Deal for Art analyzes four views of art that became prominent as a result of the New Deal's infusion of capital, resources, and infrastructure into the art's world: art as enrichment, weapon, experience, and subversion. Chapter one argues that the Treasury Department's art administrators, including Edward Bruce, Edward Rowan, and Forbes Watson, envisioned art as a tool to strengthen national, regional, and communal bonds among citizens. Chapter two contends that other art administrators, such as Hallie Flanagan, Sterling Brown, and Roy Stryker, considered art a political weapon that could educate citizens about contemporary problems. Chapter three posits that still other art administrators, including Charles Seeger and Holger Cahill, viewed art as a valuable process that provided the un-employed with healthy and productive activities. Each chapter describes a work of art---a mural, a play, and a community art program---that illustrates the various art administrators' aesthetic approaches and shows how artists, intellectuals, politicians, and lay people both created and challenged such visions.; A New Deal for Art concludes by examining the backlash against the art projects. It argues that political realignments, anti-Communism, and the decentralization of the New Deal's art projects united a largely conservative coalition that undermined relations between art and the state. Their attacks on New Deal art---as well as the economy's recovery and the nation's turn toward World War II---eventually returned art to a private affair. A New Deal for Art draws parallels between the undermining of government support for art during the 1930s and the challenges that have re-emerged since the culture wars of the late 1980s and early 1990s.