“With the United States economy spiraling down the drain, there’s been a renewed interest in the New Deal projects of the 1930s and 1940s as potential models of how to once again make big government good government.

Among the various campaigns of that period, several involved the cultural sphere and resulted in a dramatic change in the nature of the arts in this country. Patronage largesse from nobility or the church has historically fueled the production of fine art, with the subject and medium tailored to suit the donor. The deliberately public nature of WPA was a grand experiment, not just in putting artists to work, but in the democratization of the arts themselves. Fine artists worked alongside communities all over the country, reimaging the iconography of the egalitarian principles that this country believes it was founded upon. The process was participatory and inclusive, the results free to the public.”

To read more…
http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/privatizing-the-commons-the-commodification-of-new-deal-public-a