Our Recent Discoveries
WPA murals at Harlem Hospital Center had all but disappeared, but were rediscovered during a major renovation in 2004. The murals in question were among some 500 murals in New York City funded by the Federal Arts Project arm of… read more
Brent McKee & Co. have made a new video to go with the astonishing Google Earth tour of New Deal Maryland. This one is a 10 minute YouTube exercise, “Made in Maryland: The WPA in the Old Line State, 1935-1943”,… read more
On the banks of Big Chico Creek, where the university campus meets Children’s Playground and Bidwell Mansion, lies one of Chico’s most striking, and least recognized, architectural and historic treasures: Bidwell Bowl Amphitheater. The amphitheater is wrought from local stone… read more
The University of California, Berkeley, mistakenly sold a masterwork by WPA sculptor Sargent Johnson for $150. The 22-foot-long redwood carving, reportedly valued at around a million dollars, had been misplaced and sold as surplus. In March, the Berkeley City Council… read more
An unexpected benefit from the recent sale of the old Modesto P.O. is that a story about the sale and missing murals in the Modesto Bee triggered the memory of a reader who recalled seeing two such artworks in a family storage… read more
New Deal murals by WPA artist Gino Conte were unveiled recently at the University of Rhode Island. Ironically, construction workers hired under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, a federal jobs program, rediscovered the murals, which had been hidden behind… read more
7/28/2011 PRESCOTT – Times were tough in Prescott 75 years ago, but that did not dim the ambitions of a troop of transient workers stationed at the old Prescott Fairgrounds. Not only were the workers busy building many of the… read more
Chronicle reporter Carl Nolte’s article on the WPA-made model of San Francisco (see News post of Sept. 11, 2010) elicited a great deal of interest in and information on the 3-D map, including a number of suggestions of where it… read more
Chronicle reporter Carl Nolte’s article on the WPA-made model of San Francisco elicited a great deal of interest in and information on the 3-D map, including a number of suggestions of where it might go. I will be following up… read more
From the San Francisco Chronicle (Sept. 6, 2010): A giant museum-quality three-dimensional relief map of San Francisco as it appeared 70 years ago has turned up in a UC Berkeley warehouse, stored in 17 wooden cases. “It is like a… read more
