A New Deal for Nebraska Artists, an exhibit of artwork produced during the Depression, will be on display on the third floor of the Museum of Nebraska History from June 11, 2000 to May 31, 2001. The works were created by artists employed by the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), the first federal art project of the New Deal's Civil Works Administration (CWA).
In October 1933 the federal government created the CWA, an agency under Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal that funded temporary employment programs for the winter months of 1933-34.
The PWAP employed artists at minimum wages to create works of art for use in government buildings and other public facilities. Selected on the basis of artistic qualification and need for employment, twenty-eight artists worked on the PWAP in Nebraska.
The exhibit features eleven works by both trained and amateur artists, including paintings by well-known Nebraska artists Augustus Dunbier and Gladys Marie Lux.
Consolidated No. 3
Morris Gordon, Lincoln, Nebraska
1934, oil on canvas
