WPA Murals as Artifacts: Archaeological Roles in the Preservation, Protection, and Analysis of Historic Art

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was created in 1935 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of the New Deal with the goal of rescuing the United States from the Great Depression. The new legislation and agencies produced a flurry of new jobs that resulted in extensive public infrastructure as well as providing money for those skilled in the arts. One product of this investment was the creation of thousands of murals around the country. This paper argues that these WPA-era murals should be considered artifacts and studied under the discipline of historical archaeology. It questions why our discipline of historical archaeology has not embraced WPA art as material culture worthy of study even though it clearly falls within many established parameters of the field. We suggest that historical archaeologists are especially suited for complex issues of historic preservation and can be important interdisciplinary collaborators with art historians.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)

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Contact(s): Nicole Haddow