The Great Depression was a terrible time for Minnesota and the rest of the nation. One of the New Deal programs intended to get people back to work was the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA was one of the Roosevelt Administration’s most successful projects, creating jobs in everything from road construction to feeding people to literacy and more.

WPA programs focusing on the arts produced some of the best examples of federal support. In addition to producing amazing works of art, the Federal Writers’ Project was designed to encourage written work and support writers through the tough times.  Among the most well-known products are the state guides series.  Other works created by the Writers’ Project focused on history, society, and the land around them. Some examples are on display in the Library cases.

This exhibit will be on view when the Library is open, and is part of the Soul of a People: Writing America’s Story project, organized by the Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library. For more information about other programs in this series, please go to:
http://www.thefriends.org/soul.htm

Strike me dead if I don’t stop beginning every conversation with the words “the economy” but we were just talking about the last time we were in such a pickle. It reminded me both of another of Minnesota’s greatest books and a successful model for government to support the arts and mitigate the recession.

Minnesota: A State Guide. Compiled and Written by the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration… New York: Viking Press, 1938.

When Mabel Ulrich became director of the newly established Minnesota Writers’ Project she believed that there weren’t any “mute inglorious authors” in the state but soon found out how wrong she was. She ended up hiring 120 promising writers from virtually every walk of life who were unemployed and in desperate need of the paycheck the feds were offering. Some of these writers were as well known as Meridel Le Sueur. The end result was a lovely publication which kept a lot of people off the dole and stimulated tourism which helped the local economy. Not to mention a book great enough to make our list 70 years later.

My experience with the WPA guide was probably typical. My family drove around the state quite a bit [a Vista Cruiser full of kids strikes me now as a silly form of recreation] and kept the Guide in the glove box. When we drove into Esko, for example, my father would hand the book back to me and I would begin reading aloud.

The Finns are a clannish people who cling to their Old World manners and customs, and to a stranger may sometimes seem unfriendly. At one time a suspicious farmer accused them of practicing magic and of worshiping pagan deities. Entire families, he claimed, wrapped themselves in white sheets and retreated to a small square building set apart from the dwellings and worshipped their gods calling upon them to bring rain and good harvest to the Finns, and wrath upon their neighbors. On investigation, however, it was discovered that although they did wrap themselves in sheets and visit these “shrines” almost daily, it was not in the zeal of religion but for the purpose of taking baths. The Finns here are almost fanatical advocates of cleanliness, and each has his own “sauna” or steam bathhouse.

Because of the WPA Writers project a whole lot of writers owed their livelihoods to the Federal government. I owe them my love of Minnesota and its history!

Barbara Tuchman coined the phrase, “Books are humanity in print,” and nowhere is this more obvious than the work of two of Minnesota’s literary giants, J. F. Powers and Jon Hassler. So our next two best Minnesota books are…

J. F. Powers. Morte D’Urban. New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1962.

Jon Hassler. Staggerford. New York: Atheneum, 1977.

Powers and Hassler have much in common so it seems appropriate to mention them together. Both ended up at St. John’s University after interesting starts to their careers and both are thought of as “Catholic” writers although the term seems ridiculously limiting to me. As a bit of trivia, of interest only to a few of us here at the MHS, Powers earliest job was working for the WPA Historic Records Survey in Chicago. When World War II broke out Powers tried for, and was denied, status as a Conscientious Objector. He came to Minnesota to serve time in the Federal prison at Sandstone. He had the Irish penchant for writing short stories [read his "Lions, Harts, Leaping Does"] but became famous with his National Book Award winning novel of a priest in Stearns County, Mort D’Urban. Powers was married to writer Betty Wahl (Rafferty and Co.) who he met at St. Ben’s.

Jon Hassler came to Minnesota in a more traditional way, birth, and experienced life in the southern, urban, and northern parts of the state. He didn’t start writing until he was in his mid forties and Staggerford was his first novel for adults. It concerns life in a fictionalized Park Rapids and introduces characters that turn up in his subsequent work.  His recognizably Minnesota characters, like Powers, are wrought with foibles and pettiness and problems but are likable if not lovable in spite of their shortcomings. One of the smartest things that has been said about Hassler’s writings was from a reviewer who pointed out the unusual ability he has of “making good people interesting” [take that Jonathan Franzen].

Art Curator Brian Szott discusses the life and work of St. Paul artist Clem Haupers. From his birth in St. Paul, his time in Paris, his stint as Minnesota director of the Federal Art Project to his art and teaching career afterwards, Szott combines the timeline of Haupers’s life with a critical appreciation of his paintings and prints. Highlights include many examples of the art itself along with archival interviews with the artist. (5 min. 25 sec. / 14.1 MB)

 

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View photos of Clement Haupers, Clara Gardner Mairs, and their artwork. Learn more about the Federal Arts Project in Minnesota. You can also explore Haupers’s and Mairs’s papers, and read and hear interviews with Haupers, in the History Center Library.

Art curator Brian Szott was interviewed on WCCO television on Sunday, June 29, as part of their Finding Minnesota segment. He gave a wonderful overview of the current Hill House exhibit, ‘Thank God and FDR’, which is on view until November.

Watch the interview, and come see the show!

An exhibition of paintings, prints, and sculptures from the 1930s and 1940s by Minnesota artists is on view at the James J. Hill House through November 2, 2008. Please visit the exhibit website for more details and to see examples.

Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another
land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.
                                                                     Franklin Roosevelt

Late in 2007, the Minnesota Historical Society became the proud steward of a large collection of art from the Works Project Administration (WPA). The WPA (1935 - 1942) was part of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal program to put unemployed citizens back to work. In Minnesota, this program employed numerous artists creating one of the most prolific and exciting periods in the history of art making in the state.

For nearly 70 years, this collection had remained on location at Ah-Gwah-Ching (meaning “out of doors” in Ojibwe), a state-run medical facility in Walker, MN. Originally opened as a tuberculosis hospital in 1907, the institution is scheduled to close early in 2008. The employees of the hospital and residents of Walker have taken great pride in (and great care of) this collection.

Originally commissioned by the federal government–which still claims title to all WPA material–the Historical Society has been identified as a facility best able to preserve, research and interpret the work from this important era. In an agreement with the General Services Administration, MHS will hold this work in perpetuity.

The Ah-Gwah-Ching archive, as it is now called, consists of more the 160 items including prints, watercolors, oils and woodcarvings by such artists as Bob Brown, Henry Bukowski, Reathel Keppen, Dorothea Lau, Alexander Oja and Bennet Swanson. A selection of this archive will be on view at the James J. Hill House beginning in May 2008.

From top to bottom:
Communications (1936) by Ingrid Edwards
Train Yard (1936) by Sverre Hanssen
Nite in North St. Paul (1941) by Alexander Oja

Brian Szott, Curator of Art