Explore WPA/Federal Art Project

During the Great Depression, when jobs were few and far between, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms included an agency called the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The agency employed people to build public structures like schools, roads, park buildings, and more.

Under the directorship of Holger Cahill, a writer and curator of folk art, the WPA also employed artists and designers for the Federal Art Project (FAP), providing work relief by commissioning artwork around the country. The WPA/FAP established 100 community centers around the country—many in rural places where art and artists were typically not focused. Between 1935 and 1943, an unprecedented hundreds of thousands of artworks were produced by artists with the support of the program.