Photo Credit: Putting Art to Work: Prints of the Works Progress Administration, Photo: Jamie Young

Mary Ann Calo Lecture: Art and the Works Progress Administration

Free, 6–8:00pm
November 7: Mary Ann Calo Lecture: Art and the Works Progress Administration

The New Deal art projects, created to provide financial relief to artists during the Depression, can be understood as part of the “put people back to work” ethos of the 1930s. Eligible artists were paid by the federal government to utilize their expertise in various ways. This represents an unprecedented moment in American cultural history. There was no real tradition in the United States of government support for artists, aside from a handful of public art projects which appeared sporadically. But the idea that artists—like carpenters and plumbers—were “workers” that had a right to make a living, because they made valuable contributions to American society, was novel.

In her lecture, Mary Ann Calo will expand this general understanding through a discussion of the differences between the two different art projects from which the prints in the Everson exhibition Putting Art to Work: Prints from the Works Progress Administration were drawn: the Public Works of Art Project and the Works Progress Administration-Federal Art Project. She will address the position of different media within these projects, including easel painting, murals, and printmaking, discuss the educational initiatives of the WPA-FAP, specifically the Community Art Center Program, and will conclude by examining the impact of these programs on African American communities and artists.

Speaker Bio:

Mary Ann Calo is Batza Professor of Art and Art History, Emerita, at Colgate University. During her 25 years at Colgate, Prof. Calo taught courses on modern and contemporary art history, the arts and public policy, and the art of the United States. She also served as Chair of the Art and Art History Department, Associate Dean of the Faculty, and Director of the Division of Arts and Humanities. Calo is the author of three books and numerous articles. Her most recent book, African American Artists and the New Deal Art Programs (2023), focused on the experiences of Black artists on the federally funded art initiatives of the 1930s.

Putting Art to Work: Prints of the Works Progress Administration, Photo: Jamie Young

Putting Art to Work: Prints of the Works Progress Administration, Photo: Jamie Young