New Deal for the Arts

Summary: This catalog and the exhibit upon which it is based tell the story of several short-lived, but remarkable, cultural endeavors--the New Deal arts projects. During the depths of the Great Depression of the 1930s and into the early years of World War II, the federal government, as one of its efforts to employ some of the millions of Americans then without work, supported the arts in unprecedented ways. For 11 years, bet...ween 1933 and 1943, federal tax dollars employed artists, musicians, actors, writers, photographers, and dancers. Never before or since has our government so extensively sponsored the arts. [read more]