The W.P.A. Era: Art Across America
Works by Pollock, Cadmus, Shahn, Benton, Rothko, Marsh and Others Portray Artists' Response to the Great Depression
August 15 through October 31

The W.P.A. Era: Art Across America is an original exhibition which examines how artists responded to the Great Depression and also how the art scene was dominated by the Works Progress Administration and other governmental agencies that supported art and artists during those years. Major artists of the period represented in the exhibition are Pollock, Benton, Gorky, Davis, Rothko, Shahn, Marsh, Cadmus and Evergood. Selected examples of their work, some created under government sponsorship, others not, will display the rich aesthetic dialogue of that era. The W.P.A. Era, an exhibition that seeks to tell the story of the years of the Great Depression through art produced at that time, emphasizes the debate between conservative and progressive factions and also the rifts between the aesthetic and the political in art-themes that continue to impact the art community today. The exhibition is curated by Constance Schwartz and Franklin Hill Perrell.

Upon his election in 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt assured a terrified nation that it would survive and beat back this unprecedented economic disaster that was threatening the very fabric of the nation's social order. Massive public works projects were embarked upon to get the nation working again. The new president extended the government's protection to the arts: painters and sculptors were employed to adorn public buildings with murals as writers, poets, photographers and musicians also were assigned government-sponsored work. Never before or since has a U.S. government taken such an extraordinary measure to protect the role of the arts in the nation's life.

Among the works in the exhibition that demonstrate the hopelessness that prevailed during the years of the Great Depression are Alexander Brook's, Abandoned House, Georgia, 1940; Philip Evergood's, Pink Dismissal Slip, 1937; Alexander Hogue's, Mother Earth Laid Bare, 1935; and Miklos Suba's, Hooverville.

Many of the central artists of the period were those who turned their backs on the European innovators, Picasso and Matisse, and instead pursued literal fact and detailed descriptions. Called regionalists or social realists, their work was marked by the "Americaness" of the nation's original art. Among the works in The W.P.A. Era that are illustrative of this are Shahn's, Federal Agents Pouring Wine Down a Sewer During Prohibition, Destroying Wine and Paul Cadmus' famed masterpiece, The Fleets In, 1934. Countering were others whose work revealed Cubist or Surreal orientations, including Gorky's Aviation , Stuart Davis' New York Waterfront, 1938 and The Terminal, 1937. Works by artists of the period who later on made the transition to modernism include Jackson Pollock's, Going West, c. 1934-35 and Mark Rothko's Subway Station, 1939.

The W.P.A. Era: Art Across America, an important and unique look back on a watershed period in the nation's political, economic and artistic life, remains on view through October 31.

IN THE CONTEMPORARY GALLERY
Eye Candy
August 15 through October 31

In a marked contrast to the primarily realistic works of The W.P.A. Era, the Contemporary Gallery hosts a surprise-filled exhibition of paintings, photographs, sculpture and decorative arts by some of today's leading and most exciting artists. With irony and humor, the works in Eye Candy use scintillating color, optical effects and decorative glamor as aesthetic responses to current concerns with consumerism and materialism. The exhibition is curated by Barbara Goldfarb Tepperman, a member of the museum's Contemporary Collector's Circle, in collaboration with Curator Franklin Hill Perrell.