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NEWS RELEASE    January 19, 2010
FRED JONES JR. MUSEUM OF ART
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA - NORMAN
CONTACT MICHAEL BENDURE, Public Relations Officer, 405-325-3178, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
FAX: 405-325-7696
www.ou.edu/fjjma

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - WITH IMAGE

NORMAN, OKLA. - In light of the current U.S. economy and its historic correlation to the 1930s, the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Norman, Okla. premieres a new exhibition of New Deal-era artwork this spring. Revisiting the New Deal: Government Patronage and the Fine Arts, 1933-1943 opens Friday, Feb. 5, with a special public opening reception at 7 p.m.

Out-of-state visitors who bring a copy of this article receive free admission at the door throughout the extent of the New Deal exhibition.

The opening reception is preceded by a guest lecture at 6 p.m. by Eugene B. Adkins Curator Mark White. Both are free and open to museum association members and the public. The exhibition runs through May 9.

Revisiting the New Deal surveys the large collection of painting, sculpture and prints that the museum acquired from the federal government between 1935 and 1943. Selections from the exhibition include works by Stuart Davis, Joseph Hirsch, Jon Corbino, Louis Lozowick, Paul Goodbear and Patrociño Barela. A collection of posters designed by Louis Siegriest and reproductions of Navajo blankets by Louis Ewing are highlighted as well.

During the Great Depression, the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt offered a New Deal to the American people to help alleviate the economic turmoil of the 1930s. The Works Progress Administration was a national program that modernized and extended the country's infrastructure in urban and rural areas and, by extension, created jobs for unemployed Americans.

"President Obama has suggested publicly that we may need a new ‘New Deal,' which makes this exhibit both timely and relevant," said White.

Since the fine arts had little presence in American communities outside the major metropolitan centers, culture was included in the program.

"The artists who participated in the various WPA programs were ethnically diverse and it gave minorities a pictorial voice that they never really had in American visual culture before this time," White said. "This exhibition contains numerous works by artists of Hispanic, Jewish, Native American and even Chinese heritage. Many of the artists were first-generation Americans, which also gives us the opportunity to engage the issue of immigration."

For the visual arts, the federal government extended economic relief and opportunity to American artists under four distinct programs: the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP, December 1933- June 1934); the Treasury Department's Section of Fine Arts (1934-43); the Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP, July 1935- June 1939); and the Federal Art Project (FAP, 1935-43).

Artists who worked for these programs produced murals, paintings, prints and posters, much of which dispersed to federal and state buildings, museums and other cultural institutions in 1942-43.

"The various cultural projects were an attempt to assess and record the complicated cultural geography of the United States, both of the recent past and of the present," White said. "In other words, the WPA asked the question: What is America?"

Revisiting the New Deal celebrates the 75^th anniversary of the FAP and its significance for American artists and is drawn from the sizeable amount of WPA material in the collections of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art.

The WPA collection may be credited to the efforts of former museum director Oscar B. Jacobson, who had helped administer PWAP funds in Oklahoma in 1934 and then acted as a supervisor for TRAP in 1935. A sizeable group of PWAP prints and paintings came to the University of Oklahoma in 1935, followed by a series of larger collections from the FAP's painting division in 1938 and 1942-43.

This project was made possible, in part, by a grant from the Norman Arts Council Hotel Tax Grant Program.

As part of the New Deal exhibition, the museum held a statewide WPA-era poster design contest last fall. The winner of the contest, Traci Fuller of Norman, Okla. will be presented with a $1000 prize at a special opening reception for OU students on Feb. 3. Prints of Fuller's poster will be available for sale in the Museum Store.

An additional 19 poster entries were selected for public display at Michelangelo's coffee and wine bar at 207 E. Main St. in Norman Feb. 12 through May 9. Posters on display at Michelangelo's will be available for sale at each artist's discretion.

The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art is located in the OU Arts District on the corner of Elm Avenue and Boyd Street, at 555 Elm Ave., on the OU Norman campus.

Admission to the museum is free to all OU students with a current student ID and all museum association members, $5 for adults, $4 for seniors, $3 for children 6 to 17 years of age, $2 for OU faculty/staff, and free for children 5 and under. The museum is closed on Mondays and admission is free on Tuesdays. The museum's Web site is www.ou.edu/fjjma. Information and accommodations on the basis of disability are available by calling (405) 325-4938.

Construction on a new wing is under way, but the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art is open and fully functional with exhibitions and programming throughout the entire construction process.

IMAGE CUTLINE
A new 1930s-era exhibition titled Revisiting the New Deal: Government Patronage and the Fine Arts, 1933-1943 opens with a public reception at 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 5, at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Norman, Okla. Out-of-state visitors who bring a copy of this article receive free admission at the door May 9, 2010.  The exhibition explores art created as a part of or in the same time period of the New Deal. This 1938 oil on canvas painting by Joseph Hirsch, Street Scene, is from the museum's WPA collection.

Credit line:

Joseph Hirsch (U.S., 1910-1981)

Street Scene, 1938

Oil on canvas, 22 x 24 in.