National Maritime Historical Park: Hiler Prismatarium Mural – San Francisco CA

The oil-on-plaster “Prismatarium” mural at the National Maritime Historical Park visitors center was designed by Hilaire Hiler to give “striking demonstrations on the relationship of color and light.” It represents Hiler’s fascination with color and his idea that he had found the perfect color palette.

It covers the walls and ceiling of a circular room on the west side of the building. Originally, the light fixture revolved.

Several other artists worked under Hiler on this mural, which was completed in 1939 and paid for by Federal Art Project (FAP) funds. 

This and other murals in the building have been restored by the National Park Service in recent years.

The San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park visitors center was originally the bathhouse for the San Francisco Aquatic Park, created by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) 1936-39.

 

 

Richard A Walker is the director of the Living New Deal.

New Study of Ben Shahn’s Murals a Finalist for the National Jewish Book Awards

"Linden shows that throughout his public murals, Shahn literally painted Jews into the American scene with his subjects, themes, and compositions.”


“Linden shows that throughout his public murals, Shahn literally painted Jews into the American scene with his subjects, themes, and compositions.”  SourceWayne State University, 2016

Ben Shahn’s celebrated New Deal murals can be found throughout the United States. Born in Lithuania, trained under Diego Rivera, Shahn’s work for the federal government depicted a diverse nation of workers, dedicated to the twin aims of progress and justice. (Appropriately, his mural for the recently-sold Bronx General Post Office, painted with his wife Bernarda, was inspired by Walt Whitman’s poem “I Hear America Singing.”) We are extremely happy to report that Ben Shahn’s New Deal Murals: Jewish Identity in the American Scene (Wayne State University Press, 2015), by art historian (and friend-of-the-Living New Deal) Diana L. Linden, has been named 2016 Finalist in the Visual Arts Category by the National Jewish Book Awards. In Ben Shahn’s New Deal Murals, Linden explores the ways in which the artist’s Eastern European Jewish background informed the conceptualization and production of his celebrated murals.

 

From the publisher: “In four chapters, Linden presents case studies of select Shahn murals that were created from 1933 to 1943 and are located in public buildings in New York, New Jersey, and Missouri. She studies Shahn’s famous untitled fresco for the Jersey Homesteads—a utopian socialist cooperative community populated with former Jewish garment workers and funded under the New Deal—Shahn’s mural for the Bronx Central Post Office, a fresco Shahn proposed to the post office in St. Louis, and a related one-panel easel painting titled The First Amendment located in a Queens, New York, post office. By investigating the role of Jewish identity in Shahn’s works, Linden considers the artist’s responses to important issues of the era, such as President Roosevelt’s opposition to open immigration to the United States, New York’s bustling garment industry and its labor unions, ideological concerns about freedom and liberty that had significant meaning to Jews, and the encroachment of censorship into American art. Linden shows that throughout his public murals, Shahn literally painted Jews into the American scene with his subjects, themes, and compositions.”

 

Here at the Living New Deal, we showcase the era’s commitment to pluralist democracy, past, present, and future. In what is the first monograph of any artist’s New Deal-era output, Diana Linden makes a case for the role of the arts and imagination in this all-important endeavor.

Gabriel Milner is Project Manager for The Living New Deal. He is a trained cultural historian who teaches courses in U.S. History at the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University.

Post Office Wood Grilles – Chicopee Falls MA

Four wooden grilles by Frederick H. Brunner adorn the historic New Deal-era post office building located at 28 Main Street in the Chicopee Falls community in Chicopee, Massachusetts. The carvings were commissioned by the federal Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP).

Monterey County Courthouse: Mora Bas-Relief Capitals – Salinas CA

Prominent California artist Jo Mora crafted six bas-relief capitals for the tall pillars the main interior courtyard entrance to the Monterey County Courthouse in Salinas, California.  The sculpture depict scenes from early California history, featuring indigenous people, Mexican Californios, mission neophytes and fishermen.

These sculptures were done with a grant from the Federal Art Project (FAP), a branch of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), in 1937.

The building and its sculptures were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009 and renovated in 2018.

National Zoo: Fulda/Mortellito Bas-Reliefs – Washington DC

Elizabeth Fulda was commissioned to make glass mosaics – 9 by 6 foot panels – to be placed over two entrance doors to the new addition to the Bird House done in 1936.  Those were never done.  Instead, her designs were used to create colored concrete panels carved by Dominico Mortellito. Mortellito’s  initials are carved in the panels, but the design is Fulda’s, as can be seen from her drawings submitted to the Fine Arts Commission.

One panel depicts dodos and the other moas.  The panels still exist on the rear of the building – though the doors have been bricked up in past renovations and service structures added.

Fulda also created decorative plate reliefs for the bird cages in the Bird House, sculpted out of zinc.  They were placed in some some of the bird exhibit cages but have since been lost.

These artworks, like others at the zoo done during the New Deal, were funded by the Treasury Relief Arts Program (TRAP), c. 1937.

 

Richard A Walker is the director of the Living New Deal.