The Spokane Art Center in

Spokane, Washington Spokane ( ) is the most populous city in eastern Washington and the county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States. It lies along the Spokane River, adjacent to the Selkirk Mountains, and west of the Rocky Mountain foothills, south o ...

, was a community art school opened in 1938 as part of the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; from 1935 to 1939, then known as the Work Projects Administration from 1939 to 1943) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to car ...

's (WPA)

Federal Art Project The Federal Art Project (1935–1943) was a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. Under national director Holger Cahill, it was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administratio ...

during the

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

. Its staff included many notable artists, and it was widely considered to be one of the nation's most successful FAP art centers. It closed in 1942.

Background

The Federal Art Project was headed by

Holger Cahill Sveinn Kristján Bjarnarsson (January 13, 1887 – July 8, 1960), also known as Edgar Holger Cahill, was an Icelandic-American curator, writer and arts administrator. He served as the national director of the Federal Art Project of the Works Prog ...

from its inception in 1935 to its end in 1943. In addition to supporting impoverished artists, and producing artwork for federal government use, Cahill saw the FAP's mission as maintaining the health of American art generally; to this end, support was given to the creation of community art centers, aimed at providing instruction and education for adults and children, as well as gallery space for local and touring WPA/FAP art exhibitions. Working closely with local officials and arts organizations, regional and state FAP directors located areas where interest and support were strong. Once a municipality was able to provide a location and seed money, FAP would provide three to four times the amount in matching funds, as well as teachers, directors, and other staff. The first center opened in

Winston-Salem Winston-Salem is a city in Forsyth County, North Carolina, United States, and its county seat. At the 2020 census, the population was 249,545, making it the fifth-most populous city in North Carolina and the 91st-most populous city in the Uni ...

North Carolina North Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia (U.S. stat ...

, in 1935. Open to all, free of charge, with no race restrictions, the centers proved tremendously popular – despite complaints from some Congressmen and editorialists that they were frivolous and wasteful expenditures. Eventually, 103 FAP art centers were established across the nation, in all 48 states, along with many similar, locally-funded programs.

History

The Spokane Art Center was the fiftieth free community art school established under the Federal Art Project. It came about as the result of meetings between Washington State FAP director R. Bruce Inverarity and members of the Spokane Arts Association (many of whom subsequently became SAC Board members). Despite his ardent opposition to President

Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving U.S. president, and the only one to have served ...

and his

New Deal The New Deal was a series of wide-reaching economic, social, and political reforms enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1938, in response to the Great Depression in the United States, Great Depressi ...

programs, local newspaperman and business magnate William H. Cowles donated the use of a spacious, three-storey building, while a fund-drive by Parent-Teacher Associations, businesses, and arts associations produced more-than-adequate startup money, gaining $12,000 in federal funds. The center officially opened on September 29, 1938, under the directorship of Carl Morris, a Californian who had been hired by Inverarity.Mahoney, Eleanor: ''The Spokane Arts Center: Bringing Art to the People''; The Great Depression in Washington State website; http://depts.washington.edu/depress/spokane_art_center.shtml retvd 1 31 15 The teaching staff included, at various times, artists Robert Engard,

Guy Anderson Guy Anderson (November 20, 1906 – April 30, 1998) was an American artist known primarily for his oil painting who lived most of his life in the Puget Sound region of the United States. His work is in the collections of numerous museums inc ...

Clyfford Still Clyfford Still (November 30, 1904 – June 23, 1980) was an American Painting, painter, and one of the leading figures in the first generation of Abstract Expressionists, who developed a new, powerful approach to painting in the years immediat ...

, Hilda Grossman,

Z. Vanessa Helder Z. Vanessa Helder (May 30, 1904 – May 1, 1968) was an American watercolor painting, watercolor painter who gained national attention in the 1930s/40s, mainly for her paintings of scenes in Eastern Washington. She painted with a bold, Precisioni ...

, Joseph Solman, Margaret Tomkins, James FitzGerald,Guennther, Bruce; Oral history interview with Margaret Tomkins, 1984 June 6, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-margaret-tomkins-12308 retvd 01 01 15 Kenneth Downer, and Ruth Egri.Oral history interview of the board of the Spokane Art Center, 1965 November 18, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-board-spokane-art-center-12298; retvd 1 31 15 FitzGerald eventually took over from Morris as the center's director. Centrally located at North 106 Monroe Street in downtown Spokane, the center attracted several hundred enrollees for adult and children's classes in

painting Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

drawing Drawing is a Visual arts, visual art that uses an instrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional surface, or a digital representation of such. Traditionally, the instruments used to make a drawing include pencils, crayons, and ink pens, some ...

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

printmaking Printmaking is the process of creating work of art, artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand proces ...

metalwork Metalworking is the process of shaping and reshaping metals in order to create useful objects, parts, assemblies, and large scale structures. As a term, it covers a wide and diverse range of processes, skills, and tools for producing objects on e ...

, and

ceramics A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant, and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porce ...

. Lectures on art history were well-attended, and thousands of people viewed exhibitions presented in the Center's gallery. Despite these successes, avant garde-minded staffers at times butted heads with more conservative Spokanites, and Inverarity's plan to open more community art centers statewide raised considerable ire among the Spokane Art Center's backers, who saw it as a diversion of already sparse resources. These controversies, however, were soon overshadowed by changing wartime priorities, and the Center was shut down in November 1942. In 1952 the name and the basic concept of the Spokane Art Center were revived, in a new location, under the aegis of

Washington State University Washington State University (WSU, or colloquially Wazzu) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Pullman, Washington, United States. Founded in 1890, WSU is also one of the oldest Land-grant uni ...

; in 1963 it became the Corbin House Arts and Crafts Center, and in 1970 the Corbin Art Center, operated by Spokane's department of Parks and Recreation.Corbin Art Center website; ; retvd 1 31 15

References

External links

Smithsonian Institution
Spokane Art Center records, 1939–1952. {{Authority control Federal Art Project Culture of Spokane, Washington Education in Spokane, Washington Works Progress Administration in Washington (state)