Art & Architecture: Legacy & Loss

News items that speak to the vast legacy of New Deal art and architecture and to controversies about the loss of historic works or their relevance to modern times.

• Transforming the Nation’s Food System: Lessons from the New Deal and Strategies for Today

  • February 24, 2023

  The Living New Deal NYC Chapter, Roosevelt House, Hunter College City University of New York, and Hunter College New York City Food Policy Center, invite you to attend a new public programpresented only on Zoom Transforming the Nation’s Food System: Lessons from the New Deal and Strategies for Today Thursday, March 2, 20237:00 pm ...
• "From the New Deal to the Green New Deal," by Richard Walker

  • January 28, 2023

  Living New Deal director Richard Walker published a book chapter titled, "From the New Deal to the Green New Deal." Published in the volume, The Green New Deal and the Future of Work, edited by Craig Calhoun and Benjamin Y. Fong, the chapter looks at the New Deal as a ...
• Richard Walker Interviewed on Non-Boring History

  • January 8, 2023

  Dr. Annette Laing, writer of Non-Boring History, spoke with Richard Walker, Director of the Living New Deal about the accomplishments of the New Deal and the New Deal-built infrastructure that has stood the test of time. "With a team of volunteers across the nation, Dr. Walker documents New Deal buildings, bridges, ...
• The Eye of the Beholder

  • October 31, 2022

    The Eye of the Beholder The Federal Art Project (FAP), (1935-1943), provided jobs to 10,000 struggling artists. They created thousands of artworks, including roughly 2,500 murals that adorn many public buildings—city halls, schools, post offices—to this day. The FAP muralists were encouraged to depict American life and culture so as to ...
• ART FOR ALL

  • August 26, 2022

  ART FOR ALL The idea behind the federal art programs was to provide work for struggling artists and foster the role of the arts in public life. Between 1933 and 1943, New Deal artists produced thousands of paintings, sculptures, prints, posters, photographs and crafts. In the years after the New Deal ...
• "How the first New Deal remade America"

  • July 9, 2022

  Living New Deal advisor, Nelson Lichtenstein, wrote a piece on the infrastructure, social and physical, of the New Deal. Read the piece here. Construction of the Grand Coolie Dam (Library of Congress) ...
• Living New Deal NYC Chapter: Historical Signs Project

  • April 27, 2022

  In 2020, the Living New Deal NYC Chapter began a collaboration with the NYC Parks to install new signage at New York City public facilities that were built in 1930s by New Deal agencies. Limited evidence remains today of the accomplishments of the New Deal in New York City. To ...
• America’s Portfolio

  • April 1, 2022

  America’s Portfolio Between 1935 and 1943 the WPA’s Federal Art Project hired more than 10,000 artists on “relief." They produced murals, easel paintings, sculpture, posters, photographs, theater sets and arts and crafts. Though many have been lost, FAP artworks can be still be found in schools, hospitals, libraries and other public ...
• The Harlem Renaissance and the New Deal

  • March 29, 2022

  The Harlem Renaissance stands as one of the most important art movements in American history. The years 1918-1937 saw an outpouring of music, theatre, literature and visual art from this historical Black neighborhood in Upper Manhattan. Federal “relief” dollars employed hundreds of Black visual artists, both on public art projects and ...
• Audio Archaeology

  • March 29, 2022

  Like artifacts from a lost civilization, oral histories conducted by the Archives of American Art (AAA) in 1964-1965 have kept alive the thoughts and memories of New Deal artists, craftspeople and administrators for those of us in their future. The interviews, conducted more than two decades after the New Deal’s art ...