Oklahoma City exhibits offer glimpses into our troubled past
By ELISABETH KIRSCH
Special to The Star
“Subway” (1934), by Lily Furedi, is part of the “1934: A New Deal for Artists” exhibit at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.
OKLAHOMA CITY | “1934: A New Deal for Artists,” on view this summer at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, is a fascinating civics lesson on how government and the arts once forged a mutually beneficial relationship in the worst economic period of U.S. history.
The 56 paintings in this traveling Smithsonian exhibit were created more than 75 years ago by mostly unknown artists as part of the Public Works of Art Project. It lasted a mere six months, from December 1933 to June 1934, but ultimately paved the way for the better-known Works Progress Administration program that lasted until 1943.
The PWAP was started by President Franklin Roosevelt at a time when 25 percent of the country was unemployed, and another 25 percent worked only part time. Millions of Americans had lost their savings and were in a state of enduring poverty.
The purpose of the PWAP was “to give work to artists by arranging to have competent representatives of the profession embellish public buildings.” Under the auspices of the Treasury Department, the country was divided into 16 regions. A jury from each region selected artists — including a number of women, African-Americans and Asians — to create murals, prints, works on paper, sculpture and paintings for installation in public spaces, for a total cost of $1,312,000.
Artists were encouraged to portray the “American Scene” but could paint whatever they wanted. John Steuart Curry, Rockwell Kent and Willem de Kooning are some of the best-known artists whose murals from that time survive.
Besides helping unemployed artists, FDR also believed that Americans desperately needed hope and inspiration and that art was critical in providing them. It seems he was right: The art was enormously popular.
In 1934, the Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington exhibited 500 of the works in a major show, and much of Congress, as well as the public, visited it. Roosevelt ultimately selected 32 works from the exhibit to hang in the White House (17 of FDR’s choices are in the exhibit).
The paintings, all representational, aren’t now, nor were they then, fashionable or groundbreaking artistic statements. But the works, which depict city life, farms, workers, families, animals and industry, have a directness, energy and integrity that is enormously appealing. The paintings offer fresh eyes on the America of 1934.
“1934: A New Deal for Artists” will travel to seven more venues, ending at the Portland Museum of Art in 2014.
More to see
Also at the Oklahoma City Museum is the interactive, multimedia exhibit “Passages: Experience the Bible Like Never Before.” The huge, 14,000-square-foot exhibit includes 300 of the world’s rarest and most beautiful artifacts related to biblical art, including illuminated manuscripts, first editions of the King James Bible and biblical papyri. There have been lines outside the doors for this exhibit.
A few blocks from the museum, within walking distance, is the historic Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum, designed to commemorate the April 19, 1995, terrorist attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building that killed 168 people, including 19 children.
The outdoor memorial, complete with reflecting pool and hand-made chairs with the names of victims on them, is stunning in its simplicity and heartbreakingly elegiac. It is on a par with Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial in Washington.
The memorial is open at all times and is particularly moving at night, when the lights from underneath the empty chairs are reflected into the vast pool of water.
The museum is worth a visit, as it has a wealth of information about the attack and its aftermath, incorporating the varied responses from the community and the world. There is also a children’s area at the end of a path constructed from some of the thousands of pennies raised from the “168 Pennies Campaign” in which children from 44 states raised more than $450 million dollars for the memorial. It is a place, as the museum catalog states, “where the children of the world can learn (that) … goodness can overcome evil and their world can be different from the one in which their parents grew up.”
IF YOU GO
•“1934: A New Deal for Artists” continues at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, 415 Couch Drive, through Aug. 21; “Passages: Experience the Bible Like Never Before” continues through Oct. 16. Online:
www.okcmoa.com
•The Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum is at 620 N. Harvey. Online:
www.oklahomacitynationalmemorial.org 
Nice Kansas City Star Article
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by rag451
Bookmarks