The best of hard times

One of the good things that came out of a very hard time, the Great Depression, was art: the making of more than 80,000 paintings, photos, murals, posters, sculptures and crafts.

Many of them were created because the artists and craftspeople were supported through the federal Works Progress Administration.

Smaller than the WPA’s public works projects, the art project eventually employed all kinds of artists – more than 8 million people – paying them each $53 a month, or about $730 in today’s money.

In her recent slideshow at the Amherst Town Library, Nancy Baker, a retired Souhegan High School teacher who is executive chairwoman of the Guild of Volunteers at the Currier Museum of Art, showed iconic as well as
little-known artworks from the 1930s.

They boosted morale, stirred social consciousness and give hope to a nation that badly needed it, she said.

"We didn’t become bitter or lose our sense of self, in general," Baker said. "We came out of the 1930s better than ever."

Baker’s presentation, called "Just Off Route 66," was part of the ongoing "Big Read," an National Endowment for the Arts project that this year centers around John Steinbeck’s "The Grapes of Wrath."

The novel’s Joad family of destitute migrant farmers escaped the Dust Bowl on the 2,448-mile Route 66, "the Mother Road," as it was called. In the 1930s, thousands of people took it to California in search of a better life, and several of the artworks focus on the two-lane highway.

Baker offered interesting tidbits about the best known artists and artworks, including Dorothea Lange and her photo of the worn face of a mother of seven children, known as "Migrant Mother."

The family was living in a lean-to, and the starving, anxious widow had sold the tires off her car to buy food, Baker said. The mother’s name was Florence Owens Thompson; in 1978, a reporter tracked her down and learned that she and her children had survived.

Along with the Depression, there was a lot going on in the 1930s, and some of the art reflects the Harlem Renaissance and the Great Migration, the movement of 6 million African-Americans from the South to Northern cities.

Baker’s slideshow featured the work of Edward Hopper, Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, Georgia O’Keefe and Berenice Abbott. Less well known were Palmer Hayden, Mabel Dwight and Allan Rohan Crite.

Some were self-supporting, some were helped by the federal program, and all expressed the spirit of America in the face of struggle.

Some offered uplifting scenes of happy families or hard-working communities. Some had left-leaning political messages. Some featured images considered risque.

But it didn’t matter to the government officials overseing the project. They honored freedom of expression.

"There was no discrimination, no censorship," Baker said. The attitude was, " ‘Hell, artists have to eat, too.’ "

The project "changed the face of American art," she said. "It was one of the greatest things we’ve ever done."

Kathy Cleveland can be reached at 673-3100 or kcleveland@cabinet.com.