WPA Art from RAM’s Collection

February 19 – June 4, 2017

Anonymous
Richard Jansen at Work Painting a Map of Wisconsin, ca. 1940
Silver gelatin print
Racine Art Museum, Gift of the Works Progress Administration (WPA)
Photography: Jon Bolton

When Wustum Museum of Fine Arts first opened, it did not have a permanent collection. Any of the work on display in the galleries was borrowed from artists, collectors, and other museums as short term loans. This changed, and Wustum became an institution with an art collection, when Sylvester Jerry, the museum’s first director, was able to obtain over 260 works produced through the Federal Art Project (FAP) of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Working with state and local governments, the WPA was a national program that provided jobs and income for many unemployed during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Drawn from RAM’s holdings, this exhibition includes a selection of prints, watercolors, drawings, photographs, and textiles generated through the WPA. This gift of work was visionary for Wustum and RAM in that it foreshadowed what would eventually become the collecting foci—works on paper and contemporary craft.

More About the Exhibition

Exhibition Notes (PDF)

Timeline—75 Years of Art at RAM’s Wustum Museum (PDF)

Press Room

Artists in the Exhibition

Berenice Abbott, Carlos Anderson, Kendrick Bell, Marie Bleck, Fritzi Brod, Ludwig Cinatl, Jr., Paul Clemens, Stuart Davis, Adolph Dehn, Mabel Dwight, Max Fernekes, Forrest Flower, George Herlick, Andrew Herman, Carl Hoeckner, Mabel Wellington Jack, Richard Jansen, Jacob Kainen, Edwin B, Knutesen, Ann Krasnen, Paul Lauterbach, Edmund D. Lewandowski, Schomer Lichtner, Louis Lozowick, Elizabeth Olds, Louis Lee Powell, David A Robbins, Robert Schellin, George Schreiber, Alfred Sessler, Agnes Jessen Slater, Isaac Soyer, Raphael Soyer, Charles Winstanley Thwaites, Barbara Warren, Brett Weston, and Santos Zingale