Finding Minnesota

Finding Minnesota: Depression-Era Art

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) ― A sky-lit gallery inside a historic home offers a most fitting space for an unusual collection. Step inside the mansion on St. Paul's Summit Avenue and into its sun splashed walls.

"This is James J. Hill's original gallery. The house was finished in 1891," Brian Szott informed us. He's the art curator for the Minnesota Historical Society.

Szott gave WCCO-TV a personal tour of the mansion where now hangs a public exhibit of rare and historic art. It is a collection of Minnesota-made art forged by the Depression and the foresight of a President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

"Seventy-five years ago this year, he (FDR) was elected in a landslide and he promised a New Deal for Americans. And part of that was to put Americans back to work," said Szott.

In the wake of the Great Depression, the nation's unemployment rate in 1935 hit a whopping 25 percent. Soup lines were commonplace in many major U.S. cities.

To help get America working again FDR created the "Works Progress Administration," a program designed largely to build public works projects. Many cities and towns around the state still have vestiges of the WPA, things like sports stadiums, river walks, public buildings and parks.

While the WPA was primarily a program of bricks and mortar, it also put folks to work creating beautiful pieces of New Deal art.

"Artists called this period a renaissance because it saved them from certain doom, from an employment point of view," Szott said.

Hundreds of artists produced thousand of pieces of art. Each one of them was meant to hang in a public place. Pointing to a large muralist style painting hanging in the James J. Hill gallery, Szott noted, "the dates of this work all date from 1935 to 1943."

Watercolors and oils, lithographs and handicrafts -- each one of them intended for public display in hospitals, schools and libraries.

For their creative efforts and hard work, the artists were paid $25 a week. They were expected to turn out a piece every four to eight weeks. But considering the tough times in the '30s, it wasn't bad pay for someone who was unemployed.

The entire collection now on display is originally from a defunct tuberculosis hospital in Walker, Minn. called "Ahgwahching." After the hospital closed down, the collection became the responsibility of the Historical Society. It includes scenes of farms and forests, landscapes and Lake Superior.

The muralist painting that hangs prominently is titled "Communications." It is classic New Deal style and features various forms of communication throughout history.

"It's less common in the work of the exhibition but it is one of my favorite pieces in the show," Szott pointed out.

Surprisingly, many of the works are bright and hopeful, considering the difficulties of the post-Depression era, with the noted exception of Bob Brown's interpretation of economic ruin. Brown created an eerie abandoned house, leaning and showing signs of neglect. Out in the front yard stands a starving horse with ribs clearly protruding.

Szott calls the art a "window back in time" to a period of history when a president's vision restored a nation's faith.

"It was a massive employment program," he said. "We consider it one of Minnesota's golden ages of art-making."

The exhibit, "Thank God and FDR: New Deal Art from Minnesota," will be on display at the James J. Hill mansion through November 2.

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