Throughout the Great Recession American artists and public art endowments have had to fight for government support to keep themselves afloat. It wasn’t always this way. At its height in 1935, the New Deal devoted $27 million—roughly $469 million today—to supporting tens of thousands of needy artists, who used that support to create more than 100,000 works. Why did the government become so involved with these artists, and why weren’t these projects considered a frivolous waste of funds, as surely many would be today?

Democratic Art explores these questions and uses them as a springboard for an examination of the role art can and should play in contemporary society. Musher argues that those engaged in New Deal art were part of an explicitly cultural agenda that sought not just to create art but to democratize and Americanize it as well. By tracing a range of aesthetic visions that flourished during the 1930s, this brand new book outlines the successes, shortcomings, and lessons of the golden age of government funding for the arts.

Drawing on close readings of government-funded architecture, murals, plays, writing, and photographs, Democratic Art argues that those engaged in New Deal art were part of an explicitly cultural agenda that sought not just to create art but to democratize and Americanize it as well. By tracing a range of aesthetic visions that flourished during the 1930s, this brand new book outlines the successes, shortcomings, and lessons of the golden age of government funding for the arts.