Livingston County New Deal Gallery – Mount Morris NY

Description

This site, a former sanatorium, holds a collection of over 200 works funded by the New Deal, with roughly 25 paintings at a time on display. The online archive can be accessed here. From the New Deal Gallery website:

Our Murray Hill site was visited by Eleanor Roosevelt and chosen for the Mount Morris Tuberculosis Sanatorium when FDR was Governor of New York. The complex was the recipient of a collection of 230+ easel paintings. The sanatorium opened in 1936 and operated until 1971. The campus was turned over to the county in 1973. Since that time our building and most of the buildings on the campus have been Livingston county offices. When the county acquired the sanatorium it also acquired its painting collection created during the New Deal.

After 1973 the works of art stayed on the walls in the Livingston county buildings. They were displayed at the millennium celebration then stored until 2008 when the county and Genesee Valley Council on the Arts opened the New Deal Gallery in historic Livingston Arts Center. Through the auspices of the Livingston county government these historic paintings are now properly cared for. Livingston Arts also houses a library of video & print information about the Great Depression as well as biographical information on the artists in our collection.