Local art lovers founded the St. Louis Art Museum in 1879. Sixty-four years later, the museum acquired its first works by African American artists.
The artworks arrived at the museum in a shipment of 256 pieces made by people working for the Federal Art Project, a New Deal program that began in 1935 and created jobs for artists for eight years.
Much of the historically significant work had never been on public view.
“The Work of Art: The Federal Art Project, 1935-1943” includes 58 pieces from the cache of federally funded art, including oil paintings, watercolors, drawings and prints. It is on view through April 13.
“All of these projects, in one way or another, were meant to put unemployed workers back to work. Even though this was a little controversial at the time, artists were included. The idea was that art can be seen as a common good and a public good, not just a matter of elite masterpieces reserved for only a chosen few,” said SLAM’s Amy Torbert, who curated the show with Clare Kobasa.
Thirty-one of the 51 artists represented are African American; four are Asian American. Thirteen are women, and seven are immigrants to the U.S.
Museum leaders requested the artwork from the federal government after the Federal Art Project ended in 1943, specifying a desire for works by African American artists. The request was made partly on behalf of the People’s Art Center — an institution founded the year before and now considered likely to be the first racially integrated arts program in St. Louis. Half of the artworks went to the PAC and were used as teaching tools for student artists.
The works display a wide variety of styles and subject matter.
The depiction of a figure holding a musical instrument in Miné Okubo’s color screenprint “Abstraction” is influenced by Cubism. Herman Volz’s haunting crayon lithograph “Lockout” is rooted in social realism but creates an uncanny effect with its mildly abstracted depiction of factory workers with their backs to the viewer. William H. Johnson’s “Girl Seated” shows a Harlem woman in a crisp white shirt and blue skirt but does not aim for photorealism.
The exhibition includes work made in 11 cities: Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Memphis, Milwaukee, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.
Artists were paid a monthly stipend of up to $94, which equals about $2,000 in 2024 dollars, Torbert said.
The geographical organization of the exhibition gives viewers a sense of the different techniques and styles popular around the U.S.
“Artists were making work in different places, sometimes by themselves in studios, sometimes in graphic arts workshops, sometimes in community art centers, but then these works were going to travel very widely and create this picture of what art in America looked like across the country,” Kobasa said.
Federal Art Project artworks can still be seen around the region — see the grand, historical murals lining a hallway at the St. Louis central post office or the painting of the World’s Fair in the University City post office. But the pieces in “The Work of Art” are quite different from the patriotic and historical images that form many people’s impression of artwork funded by the New Deal.
“Trolley Car,” a wood engraving by Salvatore Pinto, depicts an unremarkable moment on a Philadelphia trolley.
“Doesn’t it feel like you’re just standing there on the subway platform or riding the trolley? It’s an elevation of daily experience, and of the way you move about your space, into artwork,” Kobasa said.
Some of the pieces were included in a 1972 exhibition of work by African American artists or exhibitions in 2005 and 2016. Others had never been shown in St. Louis. This is the first exhibition grouping the museum’s Federal Art Project work, with extensive biographical and historical context.
The show’s curators would like visitors to consider a central question as they view the show. “If one is paid to make art and do only that,” Torbert asked, “if one’s rent and living expenses are covered or partially covered, what can you do as an artist?”
“The Work of Art” provides possible answers.
