Above: Oliver LaGrone (1906-1995) sculpts "Mercy," for display in the the Carrie Tingley Crippled Children's Hospital in Hot Springs, New Mexico, 1938. The WPA funded this artwork (and also the hospital itself). LaGrone went on to have a prestigious art career (see, e.g., his Wikipedia page, and this Penn State page). Photo courtesy of the National Archives.
On May 7, 1941, Eleanor Roosevelt spoke at the opening of the Negro Art Center in Chicago (now called the "South Side Community Art Center"). After sharing an uplifting story about an African American artist and her uncle, Theodore Roosevelt, the First Lady told the audience, "because of that... I have always thought more about the contribution of the colored people. And, there is no question in my mind that in music, in painting, in sculpture, in drama, you have particular gifts. And in writing also, you have many distinguished people who have brought us much..."
Eleanor continued: "Now, today, it is a joy to be here and to see what this Chicago committee working with the Federal Art Project has been able to do for the Negro Art Center... And just as I [had hoped] that Art Week--W.P.A. Art Week--would develop a feeling all over the country that it was possible to possess works of arts and things that had been made by craftsmen. So, I hope that we will go on doing that... and in this way we will create a democracy in art."
Above: A WPA poster, promoting National Art Week and also promoting a market for art. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Above: Two actors in Birmingham, Alabama, rehearsing their scenes, as part of a WPA Federal Theatre Project production, September 1936. Photo courtesy of the National Archives.
Above: An African American orchestra in Mobile, Alabama, 1937, funded by the New Deal's National Youth Administration. Photo courtesy of the National Archives.
Above: George Jordan, a painter in the WPA's Federal Art Project in Washington, DC, ca. 1935-1939. Photo courtesy of the National Archives.
Above: Author Zora Neale Hurston worked for the WPA, ca. 1935-1937, collecting life histories in Florida. This work inspired her most famous book, Their Eyes Were Watching God (see, Amie Wright, "Zora Neale Hurston and the Depression-Era Federal Writers' Project," New York Public Library, January 8, 2014. Photo by Carl Van Vechten, provided by the Library of Congress.
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