Federal Art Project

The Federal Art Project was a United States government programme intended to provide work for unemployed artists during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Established in 1935 as part of the Works Progress Administration under President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and directed by Holger Cahill, the project ran until 1943 and became the largest state support of art in American history. It paid thousands of artists who created murals for non-federal public buildings—schools and hospitals—as well as easel paintings, sculptures, posters, and prints; a separate division, the Index of American Design, documented the country's folk and applied art. The programme also opened community art centres and workshops across the country, bringing art closer to ordinary people. Among the artists supported early in their careers were the future leaders of Abstract Expressionism Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Arshile Gorky, and Willem de Kooning, so the project indirectly nurtured the post-war flowering of American art.