New Artists Added to WPA Art Inventory Project

The Connecticut State Library has just added thirty four new artists to our online WPA Art Inventory Project.

In 1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Works Projects Administration (WPA) in order to put people back to work. For the first time in the nation’s history, the federal government hired hundreds of artists and paid them an hourly wage for art that was pleasing to the eye and that could inspire faith in democracy.

Thousands  black and white photographs were taken of local WPA artwork in the 1930′s. A few years ago, with funding from the General Assembly, the Connecticut State Library made scans of many of the photographs and since then CSL staff has worked to identify each piece using the artists’ work cards, allocation cards and biographical information.

You can find the resulting artist bios with a list of all known WPA artwork at the WPA Art Inventory Project, or you can go right to the images at our WPA Art Flickr site.

If you have any questions, stories, remembrances, or recent sightings, please contact Mark Jones at mjones@cslib.org or (860) 757-6511 .

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