New Deal art is a big deal at Crow Museum at UT Dallas

“New Deal Texas and the West” explores art created during The Great Depression as a part of federally funded programs, now on view through July 18.

Visitors to the State Fair of Texas are strolling through a missing chapter of art history: the art of the New Deal during the 1930s. Inspired by the 90^th anniversary of the New Deal programs that helped establish the most iconic elements of Fair Park, New Deal Texas and the West is now on view through July 18 at the Crow Museum of Asian Art at UT Dallas In Richardson.

The exhibition, curated by Erika Doss, Ph. D., the Edith O’Donnell Distinguished Chair in Art History at the Edith O'Donnell Institute of Art History at UT Dallas, highlights federally funded art produced in response to the Great Depression.

“It's interesting how many people don't know what the New Deal was. I don't know if it's not being taught in American schools, or people just have this sort of vacuum of knowledge, or they have a really negative idea about New Deal as sort of social welfare and communism. I have a different idea about what the New Deal was and why it was put together and more importantly its benefits in terms of the futurity of American art,” Doss said.

The New Deal was the brainchild of President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a response to the crippling poverty of The Great Depression. This series of federal programs existed from 1933-143 and were designed to  stimulate the economy and create jobs.

“When the economy collapses in 1929, which is global, the art market collapses as well. So, one of the first things that President Roosevelt wants to do is get people to work. So work is the big, big goal. We are all about work, right? We're all engaged in the work ethic. We are workers. Being unemployed is depressing. Being unemployed means out of the norm. So many of these New Deal projects are about work relief and artists were included,” Doss said.

Because artists were valued as workers, artists like Jackson Pollock honed their skills through New Deal projects.  The New Deal left its fingerprints on Texas, including Fair Park, Dealey Plaza and many post offices throughout the state.

The exhibition features 75 paintings, prints, sculptures and textiles created during the New Deal era, most drawn from the Dallas Museum of Art’s permanent collection as well as other loans. Many of the pieces are on public display for the first time because as the New Deal programs sunset in 1943, works were allocated to various museums.

“So, the Dallas Art Museum got about 75 to 90 works of art from two different allocations, and they promptly went into boxes and were disappeared into the basement for about 90 years. So most everything in here has never been shown before. There are a few exceptions. The Met in New York got thousands of pieces. Art museums, galleries, schools, courthouses, all over the country got New Deal art. Because there was no New Deal museum or inventory or catalog, this stuff was sort of allocated out. Lots of it has been forgotten, some of it's been deaccessioned. That's a problem legally because all of it is the property of the federal government. On the back some of these prints, it is stamped ‘This is the property of the federal government.’ It's on loan then to the Dallas Art Museum or the Met or the St. Louis Art Museum because the federal government doesn't have a New Deal Art Museum to take care of all of this stuff. It's a kind of interesting history in terms of ownership,” Doss said.

A gallery focuses on the value of work and the concept of putting people to work during this uncertain era. Fabric from the Milwaukee Handicraft Project is example of how the New Deal put everyone, including women, to work.

“In Milwaukee, there were incredible designers and interior decorators and a lot of unemployed women,” Doss said. “What they came up with was the idea of training unskilled women to make block prints of fabric, also to do weaving, so a lot of design work, but also actually physically making the work. And then these designs were sold for draperies, for curtains, for bedspreads. They were incredibly popular. And here's the kicker: 3,000 women were employed on the Milwaukee Handicraft Project, and it was integrated in a country where racism and segregation were absolutely present.”

A display of Life magazine showcases the importance of New Deal art

“These are little post office murals in a competition in 1938-39. Articles like ‘The New Deal decorates the Old Deal’s buildings’ and then full color page art of some of the murals that were actually created. So, you know New Deal art is popular, there's a lot of it, it's all over the country and yet it just sort of vanishes once the New Deal itself disappears in 1943,” Doss said.

Because post offices were important gathering spots for rural communities during this era, murals were commissioned for these prominent places. Post office murals intentionally reflected local culture and many in Texas feature cowboys. The post office mural in Cooper, Texas is a stand-out.

“I like to fondly refer to this mural as the most homoerotic cowboy mural in the state of Texas,” Doss said. “Lloyd Goff is a Texas artist who is also gay. He's in Manhattan, painting. He gets his commission. He does one sketch and they're like, ‘No, we want beefier cowboys.’ He's like, ‘No problem.’ So, he puts this particular scene together.”

A map in the exhibition shows where New Deal post office murals are located, noting which murals are still in the post offices, and which are not. People in Cooper love this mural and continue to take care of it.

Fair Park greatly benefited from the New Deal when the state planned the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition.

“It's been the site of the Texas State Fair since the 1880s. But in 1936, as part of the Texas centennial, they got millions of dollars in federal funding to remake Fair Park,” Doss said. “They remade it with the Esplanade and then all of those Art Deco, streamlined, modern buildings that hold various exhibitions. So, I just wanted to point out, hey, Fair Park, State Fair, that's federal funding. That's the New Deal at work.”

This exhibition points out the contradictions of the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition.

“The Hall of State was surrounded by Confederate flags. And then there was the Hall of Negro Life. The Hall of Negro Life, which went up in November of 1936, was up for about six months, was seen by over 700,000 people, was the first federally funded building in the United States to focus specifically on Black art, Black culture, Black business, Black agriculture, incredibly popular. And then it was razed, it was destroyed in April of 1937 because it was raising all sorts of issues about the state of Texas, about segregation,” Doss said.

The African American Museum, Dallas now stands where The Hall of Negro Life once did.

A series of silkscreen posters highlights the inventiveness of artists creating public service announcements (PSAs).

“These were all done on New Deal projects and as you can see they're PSAs: plan housing, work with care, don't set your forest on fire, don't kill your wildlife,” Doss said. “They're brilliant in terms of their color, and they're really modern in terms of composition and style. and there were millions of these.”

Doss wants people to think about how this often overlooked chapter of art history could influence the future of American art workers.

“So, I wanted to leave students and my colleagues and folks who come in off the streets to see the exhibit with this question which is could we do federal funding for the arts today and if so what would it look like, how would it benefit our artists and our cultural futures?” Doss said.

Learn more: New Deal Texas and the West