09/07/2026
Our Labor Day connection ~
The WPA (Works Progress Administration)
President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the WPA with an executive order on May 6, 1935. It was part of his New Deal plan to lift the country out of the Great Depression by reforming the financial system and restoring the economy to pre-Depression levels.
The unemployment rate in 1935 was at a staggering 20 percent. The WPA was designed to provide relief for the unemployed by providing jobs and income for millions of Americans. At its height in late 1938, more than 3.3 million Americans worked for the WPA.
In addition to its well-known building and infrastructure projects, the WPA also oversaw a group of programs collectively known as Federal Project Number One. These programs employed artists, musicians, actors and writers.
Roosevelt intended Federal One (as it was known) to put artists back to work while entertaining and inspiring the larger population by creating a hopeful view of life amidst the economic turmoil.
Artists created motivational posters and painted murals of U.S. national parks and “American scenes” in public buildings. Sculptors created monuments, and actors and musicians were paid to perform.
Federal One also established more than 100 community art centers throughout the country.
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt lobbied FDR to sign the executive order establishing Federal One. She later praised the project in columns and speeches and defended it against critics who saw the arts as a waste of money.
But Federal One comprised a small part of WPA expenditures: Roughly $27 million of the nearly $5 billion that had been earmarked for WPA work programs went to the arts. The WPA arts programs led to the later creation of the National Foundation of the Arts.
At its height, Federal One employed 5,300 visual artists and related professionals. Some of them later became world-renowned.
Before his art could earn him income, American painter Jackson Po***ck worked for the WPA’s Federal Arts Project, a component of Federal One. He worked as a mural assistant and later an easel painter between 1938 and 1942. After World War II, Po***ck became a major figure in the abstract expressionism movement.
In addition to Po***ck, the WPA employed a number of other abstract and experimental artists that would go on to form the New York School, an avant-garde art movement of the 1950s and 1960s. That group included renowned artists such as Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning and Lee Krasner.
Holger Cahill, a former director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, was the national director of the Federal Arts Project throughout its duration.
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The Works Progress Administration or WPA was a New Deal employment and infrastructure program created by President Fr...
