“I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.”

-Franklin Delano Roosevelt, at the 1932 Democratic National Convention (1)

On the 8th of April, 1935, the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act (ERAA) officially granted Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s $4.8 billion dollar request to fund the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the largest relief program in American history. The Works Progress Administration, the first major unemployment program of the New Deal, would soon become one of the most successful of the public works programs (2).

These new policies had major influences for artists across America. This blog will take a closer look at one region in particular: The Pacific Northwest.