Their work, created during what was the first major era of government art funding in America, is the subject of the Weisman’s new exhibition, By the People, for the People: New Deal Art at the Weisman.

The Weisman is an official federal repository of some 1,000 works created by nearly 200 New Deal artists on view through July 27, 2008. The museum’s collection includes works that survey the accomplishments of New Deal artists from Minnesota and across the country— artists like Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Berenice Abbott, Edward Weston, and others who went on to accomplished artistic careers after the New Deal programs ended in the early 1940s. By the People, for the People showcases selections from the Weisman’s vast holdings in this area with work by more than 60 artists in a range of media, including photography, paintings, prints, drawings, ceramics and textiles.

Curator Diane Mullin says one of the exhibition’s goals is “to show audiences the plethora of artists involved in this project— men, women, photographers, painters, expressionists, social realists. A real diversity was supported, and that’s surprising sometimes. We associate the New Deal with iconic images of 1930s America—the social realist work—but really, there was a lot of diversity.”

The exhibition reflects that stylistic diversity and includes social realism, expressionism, lyrical abstraction, and regional versions of surrealism.

The New Deal works in the Weisman’s collection were acquired in the late 1930s and early 1940s through a special arrangement with the federal government that allowed tax-supported institutions (like the University of Minnesota) to acquire these works for only the cost of the goods used to produce them—that is, the cost of canvas, paper, paint, clay, and other materials. Ruth Lawrence, then the director of the University of Minnesota Art Gallery, took advantage of this arrangement to acquire the New Deal works that are now on extended loan from the federal government to the Weisman.

The exhibition is divided into four conceptual categories: The New Deal and the University of Minnesota (including works created for campus buildings and by artists working on campus); The Other Half: Women and the WPA; Minnesota as Subject; and Outside the Box: American Modernism and the New Deal. -- www.weisman.umn.edu