New Deal Accomplishment: Over 100 community art centers, utilized by millions

Above: A WPA poster, advertising the opening of the Mason City Art Center in Iowa, 1941. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Above: The Mason City Art Center prepares to open its doors. This is part of a longer article from the Mason City Globe-Gazette, January 8, 1941. Further down in the article, we learn: "Being entirely democratic in nature, art center exhibits, the workshop instruction in various phases of art and craft work, the lectures on art and on exhibits shown in its galleries are free to the public. Regardless of age, race, color or creed, all persons are encouraged to make use of the services and facilities of the art center." Image from newspapers.com, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.

Above: A federal art center in Roswell, New Mexico, ca. 1937. The WPA constructed this building and it still exists today as part of the expanded Roswell Museum and Art Center. Also see: Sara Woodbury, "The Art of Democracy," Living New Deal, April 21, 2025; and "Directors of Federal Art Project Attend Programs At Roswell and Vegas Galleries," The Santa Fe New Mexican, December 14, 1937. Photo from the National Archives.

Above: Part of the interior of the federal arts center in Roswell, ca. 1937. Photo courtesy of the National Archives.

Above: This is part of a longer article about an African American-centered WPA art center, in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 15, 1941. Image from newspapers.com, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.

Above: A WPA poster advertising a federal art center in North Carolina, as well as "Federal Art Center Week." Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

"Community Service in the Arts"

The WPA described its federal art centers in the following way: "All of these centers are carried on with the broadest possible concept of community service in the arts, including not only exhibitions but constructive art education, often extending into recreation centers and schools. In addition to maintaining a gallery with changing exhibitions at two and three week intervals, the centers have on their program such services as the cataloging of the art resources of the community and state; free public art lectures and classes; information service; stimulation of art instruction in the public schools and an educational service intended to build up public interest in permanent museum facilities and collections."

The Federal Art Project started putting together federal art centers--also called "community art centers" or "civic art centers"--in late 1935 / early 1936. By the end of fiscal year 1938, there were 53 art centers established, and they had been visited and utilized by four million people (Federal Works Agency, Work Projects Administration, Report on Progress of the WPA Program, June 30, 1939, p. 24). In mid-1939, due to congressional legislation, the WPA stopped sponsoring the arts; however, it was still allowed to fund and assist locally-sponsored art projects, and so the popular art centers kept springing up across the nation. Art historian George J. Mavigliano reports that "By the time the [WPA] ended in 1943 there were more than 102 centers in states such as North and South Carolina, Alabama, Arizona, Utah, and Wyoming" ("The Federal Art Project: Holger Cahill's Program of Action," Art Education, Vol. 37, No. 3 (May, 1984, p. 29).

Importantly, the community art centers were "intended especially for those regions which lacked public art institutions" (Final Report on the WPA Program, p. 64) and even made inroads into rural America, for example, at Norris, Tennessee, and Big Stone Gap, Virginia ("Art Center Has Many Exhibits," The Knoxville Journal (Knoxville, Tennessee), September 5, 1938).