What role should the arts play in a democracy? At the height of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal turned crisis into opportunity. Through unprecedented federal funding for the arts, the New Deal launched the careers of artists such as Philip Guston, Dorothea Lange, Jacob Lawrence, Alice Neel, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko. They belonged to the era’s bold vision of cultural democracy: art by the people, for the people.
Brimming with vivid images and stories, New Deal Art offers a dynamic survey of this transformative period. The book highlights a diverse generation of artists who challenged dominant narratives of American history and identity. Through state-sponsored murals, paintings, sculptures, photographs, prints, and posters, these artists redefined the role of art in society. They formed the first Artists’ Union and fought fascism through collective action. They reimagined art as a public good rather than a private luxury.
New Deal Art confronts issues relevant today: freedom and censorship, race and representation, art and activism, politics and propaganda. In an era of dwindling public arts funding, the New Deal’s goal of broadening access to art and culture remains as urgent as ever.
Contributors
John P. Murphy
Author
John P. Murphy is the Philip and Lynn Straus curator of prints and drawings at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College. He received his PhD in art history from Northwestern University, where he co-curated the exhibition The Left Front: Radical Art in the “Red Decade,” 1929–1940 at the Block Museum. Murphy curated Flesh: Ivan Albright at the Art Institute of Chicago; the accompanying digital catalog received an Award of Excellence from the Association of Art Museum Curators. He is also a leading scholar on the Black artist Charles White.
