Jr Miller Architects Drawing of a Plan of Ceiling Proscenium
Tempting as it may be to think of the arts every bit a nonpartisan event, history shows that over the past 100 years the nearly meaningful and lasting arts support from the executive branch was largely the work of 20th century Democrats. It's a point worth noting as Democrat Joe Biden is inaugurated as the president of the Us on Wed, Jan. 20.
Sure, the nation'due south founders were often cultured, multilingual and known to engage in writing, invention and oratory, only information technology took the Great Depression and Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal establishment of the Works Progress Administration in 1935 to formalize federal patronage of the arts. The WPA remains the gold standard in this country, which is why it's frequently invoked as a solution toward putting artists to work in the midst of our national crisis.
Extending until 1943, the WPA and its programs, similar the Federal Arts Project, the Federal Writers Project and the Federal Theatre Projection, delivered teaching and creative jobs in the arts to a cross section of people — including women, African Americans and those with disabilities.
Thousands of works of public art were generated by artists who were, or became, leaders in their fields — for instance, Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning were WPA artists. Northern California all the same hosts a wealth of WPA creations, including Coit Tower and Aquatic Park and sites in the Mission and Excelsior districts, by artists such as muralists Edith Hamlin, Frederick E. Olmsted Jr. and Diego Rivera; sculptor Benny Bufano (his thoroughly modern, large-scale works hide in plain sight throughout the city); and multidisciplinary artist Ralph Stackpole (he crafted the proscenium ceiling at Oakland's crown precious stone, the Paramount Theatre). Stackpole was deputed by FDR himself to replicate a statue the president saw displayed at the Golden Gate International Exposition, though and then, every bit at present, the WPA and its art were not without controversy.
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As early every bit 1938, the WPA'south efforts toward the Federal Theatre Project came under the investigation of the House United nations-American Activities Committee and, by the tardily '40s and early on '50s, many artists, particularly actors and writers, would be under attack during a post-World State of war Ii push by Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower to root out communists and their sympathizers from federally funded jobs. And President Richard Nixon persisted with the persecution into the '70s with his famous enemies listing and master list of political opponents, including Jane Fonda, John Lennon and Paul Newman.
Though non remembered equally an aesthete, President Lyndon Johnson gets credit for establishing the National Endowment for the Arts in 1965, a funding agency that includes the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Federal Quango on the Arts and Humanities, and the Constitute of Museum and Library Services. The NEA is the contemporary standard-bearer for funding of the arts in this land.
From 1977 to 1981, creative person, author and second lady Joan Mondale (her nickname was Joan of Fine art) came to preside every bit honorary chairperson of the National Council on the Arts and Humanities, serving as President Jimmy Carter's arts advisor. It was Mondale who brought works by modern artists Ed Ruscha and Louise Nevelson, among others, into the vice presidential domicile and turned it into a gallery of American art. The painters Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns were among her friends, and she invited photographer Ansel Adams to run across with Carter at the White House.
Then forth came Ronald Reagan, who, upon taking role in 1981, set out to eliminate the NEA and kicked off a longstanding endeavour from the right to defund the arts entirely. Sen. Jesse Helms and Georgia Rep. Newt Gingrich were perhaps the nigh song proponents against art they accounted "indecent." Works by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and the conceptual work of Andres Serrano were effectively censored, while the case of Karen Finley and the NEA Four ultimately went to the Supreme Court. Although the NEA wasn't defunded, its budget was reduced and its grants to private artists were discontinued.
Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama demonstrated a love and flair for the arts — Clinton publicly played the sax, and Obama not only carried music with him on a device merely likewise could acquit a tune. Both presidents were known to invite hip musical guests (as was Carter) to the White House, and both were readers who took their cue from John F. Kennedy's invitation to Robert Frost to became the just other presidents to invite poets — Maya Angelou and Miller Williams for Clinton, and Elizabeth Alexander and Richard Blanco by Obama — to read at their inaugurations. The arts as an aspect of a balanced life was a given.
Some in the GOP remain unrelenting in their push to defund the arts, merely former president and painter-in-waiting George W. Bush kept it uncomplicated on his watch, holding the line in his brief notes on art policy when he said, "Permit the NEA decide what's art."
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Source: https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/art-exhibits/not-all-presidents-have-supported-the-arts-but-many-works-come-from-their-assistance
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