Mid-Morning Open Thread [CBD]

Baseball At Night
Morris Kantor

This painting was the product of the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), a New Deal government program that was an offshoot of the Federal Emergency Relief Act.

Thus was born the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), which in roughly the first four months of 1934 hired 3,749 artists and produced 15,663 paintings, murals, prints, crafts and sculptures for government buildings around the country. The bureaucracy may not have been watching too closely what the artists painted, but it certainly was counting how much and what they were paid: a total of $1,184,000, an average of $75.59 per artwork, pretty good value even then. The premise of the PWAP was that artists should be held to the same standards of production and public value as workers wielding shovels in the national parks. Artists were recruited through newspaper advertisements placed around the country; the whole program was up and running in a couple of weeks. People lined up in the cold outside government offices to apply, says George Gurney, deputy chief curator of the Smithsonian American Art Museum..."They had to prove they were professional artists, they had to pass a needs test, and then they were put into categories -- Level One Artist, Level Two or Laborer -- that determined their salaries."

posted by Open Blogger at 09:45 AM

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