In the decade of economic depression after the Wall Street crash, US President Franklin D Roosevelt took a chance. Having come to office in 1933, he implemented a new programme to help revive the economy. This New Deal included the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Arts Project, a scheme that employed about 4,000 artists – many of whom would have otherwise been forced to quit their careers – and paid them a weekly salary. In return, he asked artists to use their skills to contribute to society: reviving buildings and public spaces, enhancing infrastructure projects and making work that captured the essence of the era.
In the words of Roosevelt, it provided artists with a “practical relief project”. On the payroll was Alice Neel, the great painter of everyday people who weren’t so everyday, and subject of a major Barbican exhibition in London last year. Neel earned her salary by painting street scenes as well as political and cultural leaders. “To participate in the WPA,” she said, “and to see what was going on around you, made you more aware of reality.”
