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Art and People: The Spokane Art Center and the Great Depression
| Place: | Gallery C |
|---|---|
| Date From: | 11/14/2009 |
| Date To: | 4/10/2010 |
| Summary: | During the Great Depression, President Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration put Americans back to work on major projects like Grand Coulee Dam. Roosevelt's programs also created cultural programs like the Spokane Art Center. The museum's significant WPA collection traces the arc of this cultural legacy to resonate with contemporary American themes. |
| Description: | This era introduced the contemporary visual arts to the Northwest during Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. The impact of New Deal on artistic life in the Northwest was strong, leaving a lasting legacy of public art. The federal support of arts and crafts in the region is still evident in post offices murals, the architectural treasure Timberline Lodge, and many easel paintings, prints, and photographs in museum collections. Art and People highlights an important, now forgotten, chapter in the history of New Deal art programs in the Northwest: the Community Art Centers. With art centers in Spokane, Washington, and Salem, La Grande, and Gold Beach, Oregon, the Northwest was well equipped to bring the arts to people throughout the region. Focusing on the Spokane Art Center (1938-1942), the exhibition tells the story of how the federal government, artists, and local supporters, built communities around these art centers. Perhaps more so than other public art projects, federal art centers created a more immediate relationship between artists and the public by placing artists into local communities as teachers and administrators. Through works of art created by community center staff as well as students and supporters, historical photos and film, and ephemera such as exhibition catalogues, promotional brochures, and correspondence, this exhibition documents and interprets the rich artistic contribution that these community art centers made to the cultural history of the region. This exhibit features the important faculty and students who worked at the Spokane Art Center from 1938-1942, including Carl and Hilda Morris, Z.Vanessa Helder, Guy Anderson, Jane Baldwin and others who either taught or were students at the Spokane Art Center, one of the most vitally dynamic and influential Pacific Northwest cultural institution during the Great Depression. Federally sponsored art of the Northwest from the 1930s and early 1940s was surprisingly diverse, and a reevaluation is overdue. |
| Related Objects: |
2585.1 (Painting, "Cement Silos", 1939-1941)
2585.10 (Painting, "Hooverville Coulee Dam", 1939-1941)
2585.11 (Painting, "Rainy Afternoon", 1939-1941)
2585.13 (Painting, "Pool Below Kettle Falls", 1939-1941)
2585.14 (Painting, "Jackhammer Crew", 1939-1941)
2585.15 (Painting, "Tanks and Track", 1939-1941)
2585.16 (Painting, "Rocks and Concrete", 1939-1941)
2585.17 (Painting, "Neighbors", 1939-1941)
2585.18 (Painting, "Methodist Church in Coulee Heights", 1939-1941)
2585.19 (Painting, "Sand and Gravel Works", 1939-1941)
2585.2 (Painting, "Construction Crew", 1939-1941)
2585.20 (Painting, "Grand Coulee Heights", 1939-1941)
2585.21 (Painting, "Grand Coulee", 1939-1941)
2585.22 (Painting, "B Street - Residence District", 1939-1941)
2585.3 (Painting, "Coulee Dam, Looking West", 1939-1941)
2585.4 (Painting, "Stiff-Legged Crane", 1939-1941)
2585.5 (Painting, "Hilltop House", 1939-1941)
2585.6 (Painting, "Kettle Falls", 1939-1941)
2585.7 (Painting, "East Grout Shed", 1939-1941)
2585.8 (Painting, "Conveyor Belt", 1939-1941)
2585.9 (Painting, "Sunday Morning in Grand Coulee", 1939-1941)
3230.10 (Print, "Monday Morning", c. 1938)
3230.8 (Print, "Wheat Barony", 1937)
3230.9 (Print, "Latah Creek Washington", 1937)
3426.1 (Print, "Tekoa Farm", 1941)
3426.2 (Print, "Rural Spring", 1938-1941)
3454.41 (Painting, "Untitled", Unknown)
3454.7 (Print, "Palouse Farm", circa 1948)
3455.8 (Print, "Margaret Allen", 1938-1941)
3530.2 (Print; Lithograph, "For the Reaping and the Sowing", 1938-1941)
3530.6 (Print, "Untitled (Guardian of the Grain)", c. 1939)
3549.1 (Painting, "Grand Coulee")
3600.3 (Print, "The Family", ca. 1940)
3600.7 (Print, "Blues Singer", ca. 1940)
3771.1 (Print, "Grand Coulee Dam Construction", August, 1939)
3932.14 (Print, "Untitled", 1939-1941)
3932.15 (Print, "Chink Hunter", 1939-1941)
3932.16 (Print, "Untitled City Scape", 1939-1941)
3932.4 (Print, "Moscow Hills", 1939-1941)
3932.5 (Print; Lithograph, "Palouse Hills", 1939-1941)
3932.6 (Print; Lithograph, "Trees", 1939-1941)
3932.7 (Print, "Germania Mine", 1939-1941)
3932.9 (Print, "Bargain Basement", 1939-1941)
4149.1 (Painting, "Untitled", 1942)
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