AFA Autumn 2018

Autumn 120 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com Inventing Vermont Art & the New Deal in the Green Mountain State D uring the Great Depression, frugal Vermonters—already used to pinching pennies—were said to have asked, “What Depression?” Vermont, often called the Green Mountain State, had been in a slow economic decline since the mid-nineteenth century, as people left for the fertile farmlands of the West or life in the city. But Vermont’s already shaky economy was cut in half during the first three years of the Depression, which commenced with the Stock Market Crash of 1929. It was a period of desperation in Vermont— industrial production fell and farm prices plummeted—and yet, curiously, also one of enormous creativity. Much of that creativity was due to Federal New Deal programs, which provided work and financial assistance to laborers and creative professionals between 1933 and 1943. The art created is often called “WPA art,” referring to the Works Progress Administration, the agency that employed artists to carry out art-related works programs. Over 40,000 artists and other talented workers were employed for art, music, theatre, and literature projects, and over 100,000 paintings, 200,000 prints (from 11,000 original designs), and 18,000 sculptures were funded and created between 1935 and 1943, with the goal of creating art for and accessible to the American people. The New Deal also funded the creation of a vast network of state parks and the most comprehensive archives of documentary photo- graphs and oral histories in our nation’s history. These federal programs helped create the popular image of Vermont as a tourist destination of idyllic towns, untouched farmland, and skiing resorts. by Jamie Franklin