Trump Targets New Deal-Era Art

"As the administration continues its attacks on culture, the president is targeting a building near the National Mall with several remarkable New Deal-era murals about social security, which remain as relevant as the day they were painted. Reporter Aaron Short brings us inside the fight to save this gem of a building, which a new petition describes as a "Sistine Chapel" of artworks centering working-class communities that the government abandoned during the Great Depression (and continues to neglect today)."

"This isn't the first time Trump has gone after vital pieces of art and culture, and it won't be the last. "I think the Social Security mural is the best work I've done," social realist painter Ben Shahn once said about his fresco in the building - and artists who follow in his footsteps are refusing to let that work so easily be erased. - Lakshmi Rivera Amin, associate editor"

""We couldn't stop them from destroying the East Wing of the White House, but I pledge we'll stop them from destroying the Wilbur Cohen building," Alex Lawson, executive director of the advocacy organization Social Security Works, told Aaron Short. Lawson is one of the authors of a new petition to save the historic space in Washington, DC, which houses works by Ben Shahn, Philip Guston, and Ethel and Jenne Magafan, just to name a few."

Political leaders are targeting the Wilbur Cohen Building, which contains New Deal–era murals about Social Security that remain relevant today. Advocacy groups and artists have launched a petition that calls the interior a "Sistine Chapel" of artworks centering working-class communities abandoned during the Great Depression. Social realist painter Ben Shahn described his fresco there as his best work, and contemporary artists are resisting efforts to erase it. Social Security Works and other advocates vow to block removal or destruction, highlighting wider patterns of attacks on cultural institutions and ongoing efforts to preserve politically significant public art.

Read at Hyperallergic