Murray State’s Department of Art and Design brings the New Deal Depression-era to life this month, with exhibits across campus for Art for the People: WPA and New Deal Programs in Kentucky and Beyond. In an effort to help better understand the broader context of these artworks and the work of the WPA, they also host a one-day symposium this Friday, March 11 from 10 to 7, with tours, lectures, roundtables and tutorials from professors across various disciplines.
Art for the People: WPA and New Deal Programs in Kentucky and Beyond
Friday March 11, 2016
623 Price Doyle Fine Arts
Murray State University
9:00- 10:00am – Public Breakfast Reception in Clara M. Eagle Gallery 6th Floor and Docent tours of current exhibition Art for the People: WPA Prints and Textiles from the Permanent Collection
10:00am – Welcoming Remarks from Art and Design Department Chair, Zbynek “ZB” Smetana
10:10am – James Duane Bolin “The Human Side: The Works Progress Administration, the Federal Art Project, and the National Youth Administration in Kentucky during the Great Depression”
11:10am – Melony Shemberger “Early Calloway County Connections Between WPA Road Projects and the Bookmobile”
12:00-1:00pm – Lunch Break
1:00-2:00pm – Printmaking Tutorial with A&D Professor of Printmaking Nicole Hand (6th Floor Clara M. Eagle Gallery)
2:00pm – Cynthia Gayman “The Universal Communicability of Art”
3:00pm – Antje K. Gamble “Art for the People: The Ideals of American New Deal Art and Italian Fascist Art in Comparison”
4:00pm – Coffee Break in the Gallery (Clara M. Eagle Gallery)
4:30pm – Keynote Address – Erika Doss “A New Deal for American Art: Work Relief and Cultural Pluralism in the United States, 1933-1945”
6:00-7:00 – Roundtable Discussion with Speakers, Moderated by Marjorie L. Hilton
The Exhibitions:
- WPA Dioramas, Mary Ed Mecoy Hall Gallery, 6th Floor Doyle Fine Arts Building
This exhibition showcases dioramas from the Wrather Western Kentucky Museum at MSU. Created by WPA artists, these dioramas portray important moments in American history.
- Art for the People, Clara M. Eagle Main Gallery, 6th Floor Doyle Fine Arts Building
The NEA-sponsored exhibition features WPA prints and textile designs from the MSU Collection. Includes audio-listening station for WKMS radio documentary: Kentucky Dam: Power for the People.
- Posters for the People, Curris Center Gallery
Posters created by WPA artists, capturing the nation at a time of recovery from the Great Depression.
- Literature for the People, Waterfield Library
This exhibition showcases books from the library collection of Murray State as well as reproductions of photographs from the University of Kentucky Archives that show WPA projects in and around Murray.
- New Deal and WPA in Kentucky, Wrather Museum
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) was one of the programs in the New Deal that provide work relief in response to the Great Depression. The WPA supported public works, like constructing bridges, public buildings and roads, and also sponsored the Federal Arts Project, which employed musicians, writers, and other artists from 1935 to 1943. More than 75,000 prints and posters were produced during this era for federal office buildings, schools and hospitals. They were considered a way to make art more accessible to the American public. Many of these works are now lost, but thanks to the preservation by universities, libraries and museums, some are still accessible.
This exhibit was made possible by an “Art Works” grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
