Putting Art to Work: Prints of the Works Progress Administration
The Great Depression reached its peak in 1933 when the unemployment rate in the United States plummeted to 20%. The Public Works of Art Project, a relief measure to employ artists, was one of many New Deal initiatives that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law during his first year in office. In 1935, the program was replaced by the Federal Art Project, which was administered by the Works Progress Administration. Together, the two programs employed more than 10,000 artists and generated an estimated 400,000 paintings, murals, prints, and posters. The Everson Museum of Art (then the Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts) played an important role as Museum Director Anna Wetherill Olmsted oversaw the Central New York region of the Federal Art Project.