University at Buffalo (UB)
May 1–September 13, 1998
Catalog available with essays by Texann Ivy Buck and Lisa Fischman.
The prints in the Meyer Family Collection were created by artists employed under the Graphic Arts Division of the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project—part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal efforts to combat the Depression from 1935 and 1943.
The Meyer Family Collection gives us a look at a unique historical moment, one in which artists, a burgeoning national audience, and the government were in unprecedented conversation about the rightful relationship between American art and society. The prints are exhibited in alphabetical order to honor their creators’ active commitment to art as democratic enterprise. These prints offer a historical perspective on the public role of art, and today’s ongoing battles over it, in American.