The Surprising Lessons of FDR’s New Deal Art Programs

The Art Angle · Feb 18, 2021 · 39m

Shockingly enough, we are now coming up on the one year anniversary of the lockdown of the United States. At this point last year, a creeping dread had begun to blanket the globe. And then in March it happened: COVID hit the East Coast and fanned out across the country, and within weeks whole areas of society were slammed shut like windows during a hurricane.

In the art world, as everywhere else, the costs of the closures were immediately palpable with widespread furloughs and job cuts across the sector, enormous projected financial pain, and predictions of museums and galleries alike going…