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The Writing on the Wall: Treasury Section Murals in New Deal Louisiana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Richard B. Megraw
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Up in Bienville Parish, through piney hills rolling toward the Ozarks, the road winds down a sweeping curve, rises abruptly, and enters Arcadia, Louisiana. Main Street parallels an abandoned railroad spur and runs along eighty yards of brick-faced storefronts. The usual concerns flourish: a flower shop, an insurance agency, the pharmacy, and a secondhand furniture store. There is also a Baptist revival hall, but people point it out for another reason. Years before it was a house of the Lord, the building was a home for the dead, a funeral parlor, and as such, briefly, the focal point of national attention. That was in 1934 when, shortly after the sheriff sprang his trap, the corpses of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were fetched back to town and propped on slabs leaning in the undertaker's window. Tellers of the tale usually smile at the irony, but it is not the only one Arcadians can claim. Across the street and down the block from the morgue cum revival hall stands a United States post office built during the Great Depression. It conforms to the standard floor plan then in vogue, and at one end of the main hall, over the postman's door, hangs a mural whose warm pastels depict an abundant cotton harvest. Black pickers dot the field, sacks filled to bursting. A white driver crests the hill in a wagon brimming over with the yield and descends a road leading toward the mill. Surrounding hills stretch beyond (Figure 1).

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 21 , October 1996 , pp. 327 - 345
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

NOTES

1. The pertinent correspondence documenting the assignment, supervision, and completion of Treasury Section commission is kept in Entry 133, the so-called “Embellishment Files” of Record Group (RG) 121, Records of the Public Buildings Service, National Archives (NA), Washington, D.C. Hereinafter citations to specific mural decorations will be by “file,” RG 121, entry number and description, box no. (NA). Edward Rowan to Allison B. Curry, September, 5, 1939, “Arcadia P.O.,” RG 121, Entry 133, “Embellishment Files,” Box 37 (NA). A succinct overview of each mural or sculpture decoration for every Section commission completed, including an explanation of the work and a capsule biography of the artist is available in RG 121, Entry 135, “Letters Received and Other Records” (NA).

2. The best contemporary explanations of the mural program and justifications for federal patronage of the arts can be found in “Bulletin, Section of Painting and Sculpture,” no. 1 (March 1, 1935), RG 121, Entry 130, “Bulletins of the Section of Painting and Sculpture, 1935–41,” Box 42 (NA); Robert Cornbach, Section of Fine Arts (speech delivered at a session of the American Artists' Congress, June 8, 1941), RG 121, Entry 122, “General Correspondence File,” Box 165/24 (NA); and Edward Bruce, Government Patronage of the Arts, RG 121, Entry 118, “General Administrative and Reference File of the Chief, 1935–7,” Box 1 (NA). For scholarly discussions of the debate over federal art patronage, see McKinzie, Richard D., The New Deal for Artists (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973)Google Scholar; and Contreras, Belisario, Tradition and Innovation in New Deal Art (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1984)Google Scholar. The most comprehensive administrative account of the subject remains that by McDonald, William F., Federal Relief Administration and the Arts: The Origins and Administrative History of the Arts Project of the Works Progress Administration (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1969).Google Scholar

3. McKinzie, , New Deal, 6–7, 21–32Google Scholar; and Contreras, , Tradition and Innovation, 22–24, 54–54.Google Scholar

4. Levine, Lawrence, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988)Google Scholar. For comparisons of the Treasury Section and the FAP, see McKinzie, , New Deal, 173–89Google Scholar; and Contreras, , Tradition and Innovation, 235–40Google Scholar. For contemporary explanations of the FAP by its administrators and artists, see O'Connor, Francis V., ed., Art For the Millions: Essays From the 1930s by Artists and Administrators of the WPA Federal Art Project (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1973)Google Scholar. The New Deal challenge to localism is explored by Karl, Barry in The Uneasy State: The United States From 1915 to 1945 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 80–181Google Scholar. O'Neill, William L., A Democracy at War: America's Fight at Home and Abroad in World War II (New York: Free Press, 1993), 127.Google Scholar

5. For the best general treatment of the Treasury Section mural program, see Marling, Karal Ann, Wall-to-Wall America: A Cultural History of Post-Office Murals in the Great Depression (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982)Google Scholar. See also Park, Marlene and Markowitz, Gerald E., Democratic Vistas: Post offices and Public Art in the New Deal (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984)Google Scholar. For a regional study of Southern post office murals, see Beckham, Sue Bridwell, Depression Post Office Murals and Southern Culture: A Gentle Reconstruction (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989)Google Scholar. Melosh, Barbara, in Engendering Culture: Manhood and Womanhood in New Deal Public Art and Theater (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1991)Google Scholar, examines gender identities and relationships in selected Section murals. Both Park, and Markowtiz and Beckham, include comprehensive lists of Section decorations completed in Louisiana.

6. Rowan, Edward to Bruce, Edward, 01 6, 1935Google Scholar, RG 121, Entry 122, “General Correspondence File,” Box 33/174 (NA); and Marling, , Wall-to-Wall America, 28–80.Google Scholar

7. Marling, , Wall-to-Wall America, 81–131.Google Scholar

8. Ibid. 86–87. For a discussion of the American Guide Series and how it was assembled, see Penkower, Monty, The Federal Writers Project: A Study of Government Patronage of the Arts (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977)Google Scholar. An insightful discussion of the cultural implications of the FSA Photographic File is Trachtenberg, Alan, “From Image to Story: Reading the File,” in Documenting America, 1935–1943, ed. Fleischhauer, Carl and Brannan, Beverly W. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).Google Scholar

9. Treatments of Southern modernization can be found in Kirby, Jack Temple, Rural Worlds Lost: The American South, 1920–1960 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; and Whisnat, David E., All That is Native & Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983).Google Scholar

10. Rowan, Edward to Purser, Stuart, 07 9, 1940Google Scholar; Purser, to Rowan, , 08 12, 1940Google Scholar; and Purser, to Towan, , 09 10, 1940Google Scholar, in “Ferriday P.O.,” RG 121, Entry 133, “Embellishment Files,” Box 40 (NA).

11. Rowan, to Purser, , 08 19, 1940Google Scholar; Purser, to Rowan, , 11 28, 1940Google Scholar; Rowan, to Purser, , 12 9, 1940Google Scholar; and Hy Knight to Federal Works Agency, August 22, 1941, in ibid.

12. “Oakdale, P.O.,” RG 121, Entry 133, “Embellishment Files,” Box 40 (NA).

13. Rowan, to Flint, Alice, 08 5, 1938Google Scholar; Flint, to Rowan, , 08 22, 1938Google Scholar; Rowan, to Flint, , 08 29, 1939Google Scholar; Flint, to Rowan, , 09 2, 1938Google Scholar; Flint, to Rowan, , 09 30, 1938Google Scholar; Flint, to Rowan, , 11 4, 1938Google Scholar; Rowan, to Flint, , 11 19, 1938Google Scholar; and Rowan, to Flint, , 12 21, 1938Google Scholar, in “Arabi P.O.,” RG 121, Entry 133, “Embellishment Files,” Box 37 (NA); “Fairfield P.O.,” ibid., Box 12; and “Adele P.O.,” ibid., Box 24 (NA).

14. “St. Martinville P.O.,” ibid. Box 39 (NA).

15. Federal Works Agency, Louisiana: A Guide to the State (New York: Hastings House, 1941), 353–59.Google Scholar

16. Williams, T. Harry, Huey Long (New York, Knopf, 1969), 289.Google Scholar

17. Durand, Howard to Hon. Robert L. Mouton, 08 1, 1939Google Scholar; Commissioner of Public Buildings to Mouton, Robert L., 08 11, 1939Google Scholar; Minetta Good to Ed Rowan, September 15, 1939; Rowant, to Good, , 09 20, 1939Google Scholar; and Rowant, to Good, Minetta, 10 12, 1939Google Scholar, in “St. Martinville P.O.,” RG 121, Entry 133, “Embellishment Files,” Box 39 (NA).

18. Mouton, Robert L. to Ed Rowan, 01 23, 1940Google Scholar; Ed Rowan, to Good, Minetta, 01 30, 1940Google Scholar; Good, to Rowan, , 02 12, 1940Google Scholar; Rowan, to Good, , 03 13, 1940Google Scholar; Mouton, to Rowan, , 05 1, 1940Google Scholar; Durand, Howard to Rowan, , 12 13, 1940Google Scholar; and Good, to Rowan, , 12 26, 1940Google Scholar, in ibid. (NA); and St. Martinville (Louisiana) Weekly Messenger, 12 13, 1940, 6.Google Scholar

19. Durand, to Rowan, , 12 13, 1940Google Scholar; and Good, to Rowan, , 12 26, 1940Google Scholar, in ibid. (NA).

20. Beckham, , Depression Post Office Murals, 96.Google Scholar