1934: A New Deal for Artists

February 16 through May 6, 2012

Walker Galleries A & B
This nationally touring exhibition celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Public Works of Art Project by drawing on the Smithsonian American Art Museum's unparalleled collection of vibrant artworks created for the program.

In 1934, Americans grappled with an economic crisis that feels all too familiar today. Against the backdrop of the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration created the Public Works of Art Project—the first federal government program to support the arts nationally. The program enlisted artists all across America to paint murals and canvases depicting “the American Scene” for display in public buildings. Regional subjects, including labor and leisure, city and rural life, nature and people, reminded the public of quintessential American values of hard work, community, and optimism.

Though the PWAP was short-lived—it lasted from December 1933 to June 1934—the works of art created with government support by grateful artists during the worst year of the Depression are some of art history’s finest testaments to American life and its can-do pioneer spirit. 1934: A New Deal for Artists celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Public Works of Art Project with 55 paintings drawn from the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s unparalleled collection of artworks created for the program.

1934 celebrates another anniversary as well—the MMA’s 100th year. The exhibition is a fitting complement to one our finest “pictures of the best kind” and one of the greatest American-art icons: John Steuart Curry’s Tornado Over Kansas. Painted by Curry in 1929 at the beginning of the Depression, it was purchased by MMA director Frank Atwood Almy in 1935, on the cusp of this historic moment in time.

1934: A New Deal for Artists is organized and circulated by the Smithsonian American Art Museum with support from the William R. Kenan, Jr. Endowment Fund and the Smithsonian Council for American Art. The C.F. Foundation in Atlanta supports the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s traveling exhibition program, Treasures to Go.  This exclusive Michigan presentation is sponsored by the Community Foundation for Muskegon County and Grand Valley State University. Programming is made possible through a grant from the support from the Michigan Humanities Council, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and through additional support from Grand Valley State University; the Our Daily Lives, Our Daily Work Program at MSU; and the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs. Media sponsors are WGVU Public Radio and the Muskegon Chronicle. 

SPECIAL PROGRAMS

All programs will be held at the Muskegon Museum of Art and are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted.

Thursdays, 1:00-3:00 pm
Open Tours
Drop in for a tour led by MMA docents. Reservations are not required. Underwritten by Alcoa Foundation/Howmet.

Thursday, January 19, 5:00 pm
Opening Reception at GVSU
Regionalism and the Art of the WPA: Selections from the Muskegon Museum of Art
Attend the opening celebration for the exhibition, presented by Grand Valley State University at GVSU Gallery; Allendale, featuring WPA-era works from the Muskegon Museum of Art collection. Regionalism and the Art of the WPA runs January 16 through March 23, 2012 at GVSU.

Thursday, February 16
1934 Opening Event at the MMA
5:30 pm Reception
7:00 pm Lecture by Susan Bandes, MSU Art History Professor
Celebrate the opening of 1934: A New Deal for Artists—newly arrived from the Smithsonian American Museum of Art.


Thursday, February 23, 12:15 am
Brown Bag Film
Wild Boys of the Road
(68 mins.) This 1933 film tells the story of two boys from California whose once comfortable lives have been ruined by the Depression. They leave home with the hope of finding work elsewhere. Brown Bag Films are underwritten by Alcoa Foundation/Howmet.

Thursday, February 23
FDR Historical Performance
Presented by John Hamant
5:30 pm Reception
7:00 pm Performance
MMA Auditorium
Beginning in 1993, Hamant developed a portrayal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt for a special Colonial Williamsburg historical site program. He continued to perform as the 32nd president at the site over the next nine years, and now has the honor of bringing FDR to life for more diverse and distant audiences. Though now semi-retired, John works as a writer, consultant, interpreter of persons of the past, and continues to perform in many of the Colonial Williamsburg evening programs.
A native of Baltimore, Maryland, Hamant holds a B.F.A. in Theatrical Production and an M.A. in Acting and Directing from the University of Arizona in Tucson. A life-long interest in history prompted him to turn from a full-time acting career to the educational efforts of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Sundays, March 4 & 18, 1:00-2:00 pm
Sunday Tours
Drop in for a tour led by MMA docents. Reservations are not required. free for MMA members and Muskegon Community College students, or with paid Museum admission. Underwritten by Muskegon Community College.

Sunday, March 4, 2:00 pm
Cinema Sundays Film
Gabriel Over the White House
Director: Gregory La Cava, 1933, 86 mins.
In this provocative vision of a future Roosevelt-like administration, a callous president is a changed man after a serious accident, embarking on a bizarre and fascist-tinged reformation of the country before bending international relations to his surreal vision of “world peace.” Presented by E.J. Hamacher. Admission is free for MMA members and Muskegon Community College students, or with paid Museum admission. Cinema Sundays are underwritten by Muskegon Community College.

Thursday, March 15, 7:00 pm
Pare Lorentz, New Deal filmmaker
Lecture and Film Presented by E.J. Hamacher
Lecture: Funded by FDR’s Resettlement Administration, the short-lived U.S. Film Service (1935-40) bucked Hollywood and set out to make its own films about the struggles of the American people. Outspoken film critic Pare Lorentz was put in charge of this new program and he recruited a stable of top talent from the radical artists associated with the New York Film and Photo League. Together they re-invented the bland newsreel and set it on the path towards the gripping style of investigative documentary film we know and love today.
Film: The River (1938), Written and directed by Pare Lorentz. Score by Virgil Thomson. Winner “Best Documentary” at the 1938 Venice Film Festival.

Sunday, March 18, 2:00 pm
Cinema Sundays Film
Native Land
Directors Leo Hurwitz & Paul Strand, 1942, 80 mins.
Based on testimony from the 1938 U.S. Senate La Follette Committee on Civil Liberties, this radical, independently-produced docudrama builds an uncompromising argument for organized labor by dramatizing real-life violations of the Bill of Rights in the early 1930s by the greedy owners of corporate Big Business. Presented by E.J. Hamacher. Admission is free for MMA members and Muskegon Community College students, or with paid Museum admission. Cinema Sundays are underwritten by Muskegon Community College.

Thursday, March 22, 7:00 pm
Musical Performance
Presented by Grand Valley State University Chamber Music Ensemble and the GVSU Opera Theater Program
The Musical Evening will feature GVSU chamber music ensembles and the GVSU Opera Theater Program.
The program will include selections of works from the 1930s, performed by a GVSU chamber music ensemble, El Quinteto Pinguino, and arrangements of works by Aaron Copland featuring Marlen Vavrikova on the oboe and Robert Byrens on the piano. The GVSU Opera Theater under the direction of Dale Schriemer will perform selections from Marc Blitzstein's 1937 musical, "The Cradle Will Rock." The original production produced by John Houseman was directed by Orson Wells and was part of the Federal Theater Project.
Marlen Vavrikova is an associate professor in the GVSU Music Department teaching Oboe. Dale Schriemer is the Artistic Director of the GVSU Opera Theater and is an associate professor of voice in the GVSU Music Department.

Thursday, March 29, 7:00 pm
Quilt Lecture: Making Do…Surviving the Great Depression
Presented by Kathy Kansier
The 1930s were one of the most difficult periods in our country’s history. Learn what events caused the Great Depression and what life was like during that time. Kathy will share photos, aprons, doilies, fabrics and quilts from the time when everyone learned how to “make do.”  The audience is encouraged to bring their own quilts from the 1930s for Kathy to describe and bring to new light. Kathy Kansier is an award-winning quilter, educator, designer and AQS certified quilt appraiser.

Thursday, April 5, 6:00 pm
Reflecting on Work: An Evening of Student and Worker Writers
Presented by John P. Beck, Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives, Michigan State
University
This reception and reading will feature readings by both Grand Valley State University students and Michigan worker writers that touch on the experience of working—the hopes, struggles, joys, setbacks, challenges and triumphs. The student writers will be taken from the GVSU classes of professors Patricia Clark and Sean Prentiss. The worker writers are current or retired workers from General Motors, the Postal Service and other workplaces. Refreshments are donated by Uncommon Grounds.

Thursday, April 12, 7:00 pm
Panel Discussion: The New Deal
Panelists will discuss historical and sociological topics surrounding the 1930s New Deal.
Panelists: Gleaves Whitney, Director of the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies; John Beck, Michigan State University Associate Professor and Director of Our Daily Work, Our Daily Lives Project at MSU; E.J. Hamacher, film historian; and Matthew Lawrence Daley, Associate Professor of History at Grand Valley State University.

Thursday, April 19, 7:00 pm
Hard Times, Part I
Come Again No More—The Depression in Muskegon
Presented by John McGarry, Executive Director, Lakeshore Museum Center
John McGarry will examine the history of the depression, and it’s dramatic effects on Muskegon County. He will explore how the depression affected local residents and business, the unique methods used by this community to survive the hardest of times, and especially how the Works Progress Administration (WPA) programs in this area created a lasting cultural legacy.
John McGarry is the Executive Director of the Lakeshore Museum Center. With over thirty years in the Museum profession, he has worked for the National Park Service, the United States Marine Corps Historical program, and spent three years as a treasure hunter. Amongst his many projects here in Muskegon, he created the first historic house museum in the United States that tells the story of the Great Depression, the Scolnik House.

Thursday, April 26, 7:00 pm
Hard Times, Part II
Strength in Numbers; Great Art in Troubled Times
Presented by E. Jane Connell, Sr. Curator, Muskegon Museum of Art
Connell will discuss the remarkable growth of the collections of the Muskegon Museum of Art that occurred during the decade of the 1930’s in spite of, or perhaps at times because of, the great challenges of the Great Depression, and will discuss how Museum leaders coped with those times.  The talk will also relate the relevance of the MMA’s collections to the works created for the WPA Art Project presented in 1934:  A New Deal for Artists and to the American Scene. 

EDUCATOR GUIDE pdf

Images, top to bottom:

Julia Eckel,Radio Broadcast, 1933-1934, oil on canvas; Smithsonian American Art Museum. Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor

Paul Kelpe,Machinery (Abstract #2), 1933-1934, oil on canvas; Smithsonian American Art Museum. Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor

Robert Brackman,Somewhere in America, 1934, oil on canvas; Smithsonian American Art Museum. Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor

Ross Dickinson, Valley Farms, 1934, oil on canvas; Smithsonian American Art Museum. Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor

Earle Richardson,Employment of Negroes in Agriculture, 1934, oil on canvas; Smithsonian American Art Museum. Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor

Millard Sheets, Tenement Flats, 1933-1934, oil on canvas; Smithsonian American Art Museum. Transfer from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service

Sponsors

Expressions 2012: 30th Annual Muskegon Area Student Art Exhibition

February 16 through April 8, 2012

Livio DeMarchi (Italian, born 1943)

Strumenti del pittore (Paint Brushes with Pot) (detail)

Wood and ceramic, 1993 

Muskegon Museum of Art Gift of the “In and Around Venice” MMA tour participants, 1993

Look forward to the end of winter and the arrival of this popular annual exhibition of artwork by Muskegon Area K-12 public and non-public students.

 

STUDENT ARTIST RECEPTIONS 

Join us to celebrate Muskegon County's K-12 artists! Cookies and lemonade will be served and admission is free.

 

MIDDLE- AND HIGH SCHOOL SCHOOLS 

Wednesday, February 29, 5:30-7:30 pm

Thursday, March 1, 5:30-7:30 pm

 

ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS 

Tuesday, March 6, 5:30-7:30 pm

Wednesday, March 7, 5:30-7:30 pm

 

Expressions 2012 is organized by the MMA and the Muskegon Area Intermediate School District. Sponsored by the Community Foundation for Muskegon County, Comerica, and the MAISD,