The Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) was a New Deal program designed to employ artists that operated from 1933 to 1934. The program was headed by

Edward Bruce Edward Bruce, Earl of Carrick ( Norman French: ; mga, Edubard a Briuis; Modern Scottish Gaelic: gd, Eideard or ; – 14 October 1318), was a younger brother of Robert the Bruce, King of Scots. He supported his brother in the 1306–1314 st ...

, under the

United States Treasury Department The Department of the Treasury (USDT) is the Treasury, national treasury and finance department of the federal government of the United States, where it serves as an United States federal executive departments, executive department. The departme ...

with funding from the Civil Works Administration. The PWAP served as way to employ artists, while having competent representatives of the profession display their work in a public setting.''provided by John R. Graham, Curator of Exhibits, Western Illinois University Art Gallery, 1 University Circle, Macomb, Illinois 61455'' Although the program lasted less than one year, it had employed 3,749 artists, who produced 15,663 works of art. In an art exhibition that featured 451 paintings commissioned by the PWAP, 30 percent of the artists featured were in their twenties, and 25 percent were first-generation immigrants. Coit Tower, San Francisco (2013) - 07

Agnes Tait, Skating in Central Park, 1934, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Astronomers Monument at Griffith Observatory

Overview and purpose

The purpose of the Public Works of Art Project was "to give work to artists by arranging to have competent representatives of the profession embellish public buildings." Artworks from the project were shown or incorporated into a variety of locations, including the White House and the House of Representatives. Artists were paid an average of $75.59 per artwork, and the PWAP used a total of $1,184,400 to pay artists for their work. Participants were required to be professional artists, and in total, 3,749 artists were hired, and 15,663 works were produced: 7,000 easel paintings; 700 mural projects; 750 sculptures; and 2500 works of graphic art were commissioned by the PWAP. The PWAP sought to produce images focused on the "American Scene", and commissioned paintings and murals that depicted "optimistic visions of America during a time of economic desperation." However, many artists disliked the idea of creating art that focused only on the positive aspects of living in America, as people were still experiencing dire hardships and personal tragedies from the Great Depression. This created a community of PWAP artists who aspired to create artworks depicting both the "haves" and "have nots" of America, referred to as Social Realists. The project was succeeded by the

Federal Art Project The Federal Art Project (1935–1943) was a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. Under national director Holger Cahill, it was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administrati ...

of the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

(WPA).

Art from the Public Works of Art Project

Coit Tower Murals

The largest of the projects sponsored by the PWAP were the murals in San Francisco's

Coit Tower Coit Tower is a tower in the Telegraph Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, California, offering panoramic views over the city and the bay. The tower, in the city's Pioneer Park, was built between 1932 and 1933 using Lillie Hitchcock Coit's beq ...

, employing a total of 44 artists and assistants, begun in December 1933 and completed in June 1934. Many of the muralists were faculty members or former students of the

California School of Fine Arts San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was a private college of contemporary art in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI was one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of the Mississippi River. Approximately ...

(CSFA). Among the lead artists were

Maxine Albro Maxine Albro (January 20, 1893 – July 19, 1966) was an American painter, muralist, lithographer, mosaic artist, and sculptor. She was one of America's leading female artists, and one of the few women commissioned under the New Deal's Federal Ar ...

Victor Arnautoff Victor Mikhail Arnautoff (born Uspenovka, Taurida Governorate, Russian Empire, November 11, 1896 – died Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, March 22, 1979) was a Russian-American painter and professor of art. He worked in San Francisco and ...

, Jane Berlandina
Ray Bertrand
Roy Boynton
Ralph Chesse
Ben Cunningham, Rinaldo Cuneo
Harold Mallette DeanParker Hall

Edith Hamlin Edith Ann Hamlin (June 23, 1902 – February 18, 1992) was an American landscape and portrait painter, and muralist. She is known for her social realism murals created while working with the Public Works of Art Project, Federal Art Project and th ...

George Albert Harris George Albert Harris, also known as George Harris (1913–1991), was an American painter, muralist, lithographer, and educator. He was a participant in the WPA Federal Art Project and was among the youngest artists on the mural project at Coit T ...

William Hesthal

John Langley Howard John Langley "Lang" Howard (1902–1999) was an American artist, known as a Social Realist muralist, printmaker and illustrator. Biography John Langley Howard was born in Upper Montclair, New Jersey on February 5, 1902, the son of architect Jo ...

Lucien Labaudt Lucien Adolphe Labaudt (May 14, 1880 – December 12, 1943) was a French-born American painter based in San Francisco, California. His best-known work may be ''Powell Street'' (1934), a mural in fresco at Coit Tower that he created for the Public ...

Gordon Langdon
Jose Moya del Pino,

Otis Oldfield Otis William Oldfield (July 3, 1890 – May 18, 1969) was a San Francisco painter, printmaker and art educator. Early life and education Otis William Oldfield was born on July 3, 1890, in Sacramento, California. He attended Sutter High School ...

, Frederick E. Olmsted, Suzanne Scheuer,

Ralph Stackpole Ralph Ward Stackpole (May 1, 1885 – December 10, 1973) was an American sculptor, painter, muralist, etcher and art educator, San Francisco's leading artist during the 1920s and 1930s. Stackpole was involved in the art and causes of social realis ...

Edward TeradaFrede VidarClifford Wight
and

Bernard Zakheim Bernard Baruch Zakheim (April 4, 1898 – November 28, 1985) was a Warsaw-born San Francisco muralist, best known for his work on the Coit Tower murals. Early life and immigration Zakheim was born to a Hasidic Jewish family in Warsaw, then part ...

. After a majority of the murals were completed, the Big Strike of 1934 shut down the Pacific Coast. Though it has been claimed that allusions to the event were subversively included in the murals by some of the artists, in fact the murals were largely completed before the strike began and none of those that were not completed by that time show any reference to the strike.

Griffith Observatory's ''Astronomers Monument''

''The

Astronomers Monument Griffith Observatory is an observatory in Los Angeles, California on the south-facing slope of Mount Hollywood in Griffith Park. It commands a view of the Los Angeles Basin including Downtown Los Angeles to the southeast, Hollywood to the south, ...

'', commissioned by the Public Works of Art Project in 1933, sits outside of the

Griffith Observatory Griffith Observatory is an observatory in Los Angeles, California on the south-facing slope of Mount Hollywood in Griffith Park. It commands a view of the Los Angeles Basin including Downtown Los Angeles to the southeast, Hollywood to the sout ...

in Los Angeles, California. ''The Astronomers Monument'' was designed by

Archibald Garner Lorraine Archibald “Archie” Garner (February 24, 1904 – May 7, 1969) was an American sculptor. During the New Deal he was commissioned by the Public Works of Art Project and Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture to create several nota ...

, and created by Garner and five other artists. Each artist was responsible for sculpting one of the astronomers featured in the monument, and in total the monument features six influential astronomers:

Hipparchus Hipparchus (; el, Ἵππαρχος, ''Hipparkhos''; BC) was a Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician. He is considered the founder of trigonometry, but is most famous for his incidental discovery of the precession of the equi ...

(about 150 BC);

Nicholas Copernicus Nicolaus Copernicus (; pl, Mikołaj Kopernik; gml, Niklas Koppernigk, german: Nikolaus Kopernikus; 19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance polymath, active as a mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic canon, who formulated ...

(1473–1543);

Galileo Galilei Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He was ...

(1564–1642);

Johannes Kepler Johannes Kepler (; ; 27 December 1571 – 15 November 1630) was a German astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, natural philosopher and writer on music. He is a key figure in the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, best known for his laws ...

(1571–1630);

Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a "natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of the grea ...

(1642–1727); and

William Herschel Frederick William Herschel (; german: Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel; 15 November 1738 – 25 August 1822) was a German-born British astronomer and composer. He frequently collaborated with his younger sister and fellow astronomer Caroline H ...

(1738–1822). One of the artists,

George Stanley Colonel George Francis Gillman Stanley (July 6, 1907September 13, 2002) was a Canadian historian, author, soldier, teacher, public servant, and designer of the Canadian flag. Early life and education George F.G. Stanley was born in Calgary, Alb ...

, was also the creator of the famous "

Oscar Oscar, OSCAR, or The Oscar may refer to: People * Oscar (given name), an Irish- and English-language name also used in other languages; the article includes the names Oskar, Oskari, Oszkár, Óscar, and other forms. * Oscar (Irish mythology) ...

" statuette presented at the Academy Awards. On November 25, 1934, about six months prior to the opening of the Observatory, a celebration took place to mark the completion of the ''Astronomers Monument''. The only "signature" on the ''Astronomers Monument'' is "PWAP 1934" referring to the program which funded the project and the year it was completed.

''Muse of Music, Dance, Drama''

Entrance to Hollywood Bowl, Hollywood, Calif (70194)

This

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

style monument serves as the gateway to the

Hollywood Bowl The Hollywood Bowl is an amphitheatre in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It was named one of the 10 best live music venues in America by ''Rolling Stone'' magazine in 2018. The Hollywood Bowl is known for its distin ...

, and is said to be the largest of hundreds of monuments in Southern California constructed during the New Deal. The 200-foot long, 22-foot high sculpture is also a fountain and was constructed with concrete and covered with slabs of decorative granite. The structure was completed in 1940 by

, also a contributor to the

's ''Astronomers Monument'' and who is better known as the sculptor who molded the original

Academy Awards The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...

' Oscar statue. The structure was refurbished in 2006.

''Golden Gate Bridge''

This painting, titled ''Golden Gate Bridge,'' was commissioned by the Public Works of Art Project in 1934. The artist, Ray Strong, painted a depiction of the Golden Gate Bridge while it was under construction. Building the Golden Gate Bridge seemed impossible at the time it was built, due to the wind and overall complexity of the bridge design. This painting was commissioned as a tribute to the engineering and design feats undertaken during the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. This painting represents the American Idealism art style.

''Connecticut Barns''

This 1934 painting was not recognized as being the work of

Charles Sheeler Charles Sheeler (July 16, 1883 – May 7, 1965) was an American artist known for his Precisionist paintings, commercial photography, and the avant-garde film, ''Manhatta'', which he made in collaboration with Paul Strand. Sheeler is recognized ...

until a

General Services Administration The General Services Administration (GSA) is an independent agency of the United States government established in 1949 to help manage and support the basic functioning of federal agencies. GSA supplies products and communications for U.S. gover ...

art researcher found it in an

Interior Department An interior ministry (sometimes called a ministry of internal affairs or ministry of home affairs) is a government department that is responsible for internal affairs. Lists of current ministries of internal affairs Named "ministry" * Ministry ...

closet in 1983. It was not known that Sheeler had been employed by the Public Works of Art Project because the artist's name had been misspelled in government records. He was paid $221.85 for ''Connecticut Barns''. Its title distinguishes it from a similar watercolor—''Connecticut Barns in Landscape''—measuring 4 by 5 inches, which is thought to be a study for this oil canvas.

Additional works

*
Figures
' (1934) by

Josef Presser Josef Presser (1907-1967) was an American artist. Biography Presser was born in 1907 in Lublin, Poland. He emigrated to the United States at the age of twelve and studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. During the 1930s Press ...

. *
Inside a Lumber Mill
' (1934), by

Claire Falkenstein Claire Falkenstein (; July 22, 1908 – October 23, 1997) was an American sculptor, painter, printmaker, jewelry designer, and teacher, most renowned for her often large-scale abstract metal and glass public sculptures. Falkenstein was one of Am ...

. *
Lumber Mill
' (1934), by Claire Falkenstein. *
Oyster Shuckers
' (1934) b
Catherine M. Howell
*
The Factory
' (1934), by Louis Hirshman. *
The Timber Bucker
' (1934), b
Ernest Ralph Norling
*
The Storm
' (1934), by Abram Molarsky. *
Upstream Boulder Dam
' (1934), b
Adrian D. Clem
*
Valley Farms
' (1934), by Ross Dickinson.

References

External links

*
Public Works of Art Project. Report of the Assistant Director of the Treasury to Federal Emergency Relief Administrator, December 8, 1933 – June 30, 1934
' (

HathiTrust HathiTrust Digital Library is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries including content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digitized locally ...

)
The Living New Deal Project
a digital database of the lasting effects of the New Deal founded in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley (including an interactive map featuring detailed information on public artworks created as a part of the New Deal)

1934: A New Deal for Artists
a link to Anne Prentice Wagner's article, "1934: A New Deal for Artists" in the Spring 2009 issue of Antiques and Fine Art Magazine. * Additional photographs of th
Coit Tower murals
by

, et al. {{DEFAULTSORT:Public Works Of Art Project New Deal projects of the arts New Deal agencies Public art in the United States 1933 in the United States 1934 in the United States