For its 40th anniversary, the Orson Welles-narrated documentary about Franklin D Roosevelt’s post-depression artist program, is getting a vital re-release
In America, the culture war over state funding of arts programs never really ends, but rather assumes slightly altered forms over time. The latest battle lines have formed around Broadway, in desperate need of an infusion of cash from the government to survive the pandemic, much to the chagrin of budget-slashing conservatives. Not so long ago, the debate centered on Andres Serrano’s urine-soaked crucifix Piss Christ, intended as an improbable expression of faith yet overwritten as an act of sacrilege by an outraged Christian right. Though it takes up an absurdly minuscule amount of tax revenue, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) attracts more heat than most federal ventures, to the point that attacking it has become something of a national tradition for Republicans – one that predates the NEA itself.
In 1935, as part of the Second New Deal designed to get the American people back on their feet in the wake of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration. Dedicated to employing the millions left without a job by the financial downturn, the agency facilitated the construction of innumerable public buildings and roads, but also reserved a chunk of its capital for a special branch deemed Federal Project Number One. This program disbursed grants to nearly 40,000 artists, writers, musicians, actors and other creative types before the WPA’s dissolution in 1942, ushering in a cultural renaissance that would lay the track for the following century’s achievements. This did not stop FDR’s critics from painting it as the vanity lark of a liberal lily-liver, however.
