Oklahoma Museum Opens ‘New Deal’ Exhibit

Revisiting The New Deal: Government Patronage And The Fine Arts, 1933-1943

NORMAN, Okla. — In light of the current U.S. economy and its historic correlation to the 1930s, the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Norman, Okla. premieres a new exhibition of New Deal-era artwork this spring. Revisiting the New Deal: Government Patronage and the Fine Arts, 1933-1943 opens Friday, Feb. 5, with a special public opening reception at 7 p.m.

The opening reception is preceded by a guest lecture at 6 p.m. by Eugene B. Adkins Curator Mark White. Both are free and open to museum association members and the public. The exhibition runs through May 9.

Revisiting the New Deal surveys the large collection of painting, sculpture and prints that the museum acquired from the federal government between 1935 and 1943. Selections from the exhibition include works by Stuart Davis, Joseph Hirsch, Jon Corbino, Louis Lozowick, Paul Goodbear and Patrociño Barela. A collection of posters designed by Louis Siegriest and reproductions of Navajo blankets by Louis Ewing are highlighted as well.

During the Great Depression, the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt offered a New Deal to the American people to help alleviate the economic turmoil of the 1930s. The Works Progress Administration was a national program that modernized and extended the country’s infrastructure in urban and rural areas and, by extension, created jobs for unemployed Americans.

“President Obama has suggested publicly that we may need a new ‘New Deal,’ which makes this exhibit both timely and relevant,” said White.

Since the fine arts had little presence in American communities outside the major metropolitan centers, culture was included in the program.

“The artists who participated in the various WPA programs were ethnically diverse and it gave minorities a pictorial voice that they never really had in American visual culture before this time,” White said. “This exhibition contains numerous works by artists of Hispanic, Jewish, Native American, and even Chinese heritage. Many of the artists were first-generation Americans, which also gives us the opportunity to engage the issue of immigration.”

For the visual arts, the federal government extended economic relief and opportunity to American artists under four distinct programs: the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP, December 1933- June 1934); the Treasury Department’s Section of Fine Arts (1934-43); the Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP, July 1935- June 1939); and the Federal Art Project (FAP, 1935-43).

Artists who worked for these programs produced murals, paintings, prints and posters, much of which dispersed to federal and state buildings, museums and other cultural institutions in 1942-43.

Revisiting the New Deal celebrates the 75th anniversary of the FAP and its significance for American artists and is drawn from the sizeable amount of WPA material in the collections of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art.

The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art is located in the OU Arts District on the corner of Elm Avenue and Boyd Street, at 555 Elm Ave., on the OU Norman campus.

Admission to the museum is free to all OU students with a current student ID and all museum association members, $5 for adults, $4 for seniors, $3 for children 6 to 17 years of age, $2 for OU faculty/staff, and free for children 5 and under. The museum is closed on Mondays and admission is free on Tuesdays. The museum’s Website is . Information and accommodations on the basis of disability are available by calling (405) 325-4938.