ART : Such a Deal! : A Long Beach Exhibit and Tour Reassesses the Rich Legacy of WPA Art Program

Imagine a program in which Uncle Sam employs scores of painters, sculptors, muralists and printmakers full time and pays them the average national wage to do what they love best.

That may sound like heaven--or a waste of tax dollars, depending on your politics--but such an arrangement did exist. The programs were among the many federal work-relief projects of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, and they generated hundreds of thousands of artworks nationwide, many of which are still around.

Ongoing at the FHP Hippodrome Gallery is an exhibit about the programs’ legacy in Long Beach. “Federal Art in Long Beach: A Heritage Rediscovered” contains photographs, renderings, paintings, prints and artifacts. It also focuses on eight murals and mosaic works known to remain there of 14 major federal art projects of the 1930s. A free guided van tour of five of those projects will be offered Nov. 16.

“We have a good bit” of New Deal artworks “in the city, but they’ve never been well documented, and most people are oblivious to them,” art historian and exhibit co-curator Douglas M. Hinkey said recently.

There were several varieties of New Deal federal art programs. All, however, were inspired by the Mexican government’s nationalist art program of the 1920s. All relief artists were screened to determine degree of proficiency, and assignments to certain projects were made by skill, according to the exhibit catalogue written by Hinkey. They were paid between $70 and $100 a month for full-time work.

(One prominent Orange County federal art mural by Helen Lundeberg at Fullerton’s old City Hall is soon to be restored. Other Southern California projects are examined in Laguna Art Museum’s current show “Dream and Perspective: The American Scene in Southern California, 1930-1945.”)

Federally supported easel painters, whose works were hung in government institutions, were given lots of freedom to choose subjects and styles, although few chose abstraction or other modern idioms. Muralists, on the other hand, had to paint in the realistic, representational mode common to the time. Also, as the country was struggling through the Great Depression, they were required to depict national or local history, rural and urban life, and “an industrious, productive and optimistic America,” Hinkey writes.

Long Beach’s murals and mosaics, all done under the Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project program, reflect this mandate as well as a requirement that muralists respond to the spirit of the communities for which their works were intended.

Among the surviving projects is a mural at the Long Beach Public Library. Five were painted at public schools, and one of these, a mural by Jean Swiggett and Ivan Bartlett at Long Beach Polytechnic High School, is probably the best-preserved of all the works, said gallery director and exhibit co-curator Cynthia MacMullin.

“Industrial Activities in Long Beach” (1939) depicts work and play at the city’s harbor in a crowded tableau populated by longshoremen hauling crates, sailors lugging duffel bags, a bearded fisherman, soldiers, cannery workers, bathers and a surfer.

The best-known and most highly regarded project, the “Long Beach Recreation” (1938) mosaic, also has a leisure-time theme. It’s a colorful, bucolic seaside scene with volleyball, croquet and horseshoe players, picnickers, lifeguards and swimmers. The monumental work--it’s made up of more than 460,000 tiles and is about four stories tall--was done by Stanton Macdonald-Wright for the facade of the city’s Municipal Auditorium. It was moved to the Promenade when the auditorium was razed in 1975.

Macdonald-Wright was one of Los Angeles’ most influential artists of the ‘20s and ‘30s, and he won acclaim for the mosaic. Hinkey said, however, that most of the federal art projects are clearly “mediocre.”

“No, it’s not the best work,” he said. “The point was that the (federal government) employed virtually anyone” after what was a minimal screening. “But the remarkable thing was they allowed artists to be artists and didn’t make them go dig ditches,” thus supporting art and culture.

The artists of the time fully embraced the federal programs, he added. Most didn’t mind content constraints that forced them to express Roosevelt’s ideals of American prosperity because “many were very sympathetic” to the Administration’s goals.

Plus, Hinkey said, “they were thrilled to death to get a paycheck for doing their art.”

What: “Federal Art in Long Beach: A Heritage Rediscovered,” documentation of 1930s federal art projects in Long Beach.

When: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday through Dec. 21. A free 90-minute guided van tour of five existing projects will be offered Nov. 16; it will leave the gallery at 11 a.m.

Where: FHP Hippodrome Gallery, 628 Alamitos Ave., Long Beach.

Whereabouts: Take the San Diego (405) Freeway north to Atlantic Avenue. Go south on Atlantic to 7th Street, left on 7th, then right on Alamitos. Gallery will be on the left, between 6th and 7th streets.

Wherewithal: Admission is free.

Where to call: (213) 432-8431.