The united states government commissioned over 1,100 murals for the embellishment of post offices nationwide. Wisconsin received 35 of these murals. After nearly 85 years, the story of their existence is elusive and often overlooked. Gates's research of the correspondence between the artists and government tells the stories of how the murals were developed and eventually installed in small towns throughout Wisconsin. Wisconsin Post Office Murals is packed with fascinating details: 130 full-color images of the murals 70 images of buildings and cornerstones Full-color map with the location of each town The history and story of each mural Written to educate and promote these wonderful Depression-era works of art and buildings, Wisconsin Post Office Murals is a must-have for any New Deal, history, or post office enthusiast. If you've ever been to any of the 35 post offices written about here and asked yourself, Why is there a mural in the lobby or Who is the artist who painted the mural on the wall, this is the book for you.

In the years between 1936 and 1943, some three hundred artworks--primarily murals but also some sculptures, terra-cotta reliefs, and limestone reliefs--were installed in federal buildings throughout the South as part of a nationwide project by the Treasury Section of Fine Arts. The murals depicted aspects of southern history and life ranging from scenes of Indians and settlers to portraits of modern life and industry. In Depression Post Office Murals and Southern Culture, Sue Bridwell Beckham investigates the cultural implications of the Section murals. She makes use of the extensive correspondence preserved in the Section records to sound the values of working- and lower-middle-class white southerners, who voiced their objections to the murals as well as their approval; the attitudes of the artists who painted the murals; and the outlook of the Section itself, which had strong views about art and what was appropriate. --jacket.

A study of Ben Shahn’s New Deal murals (1933–43) in the context of American Jewish history, labor history, and public discourse. Lithuanian-born artist Ben Shahn learned fresco painting as an assistant to Diego Rivera in the 1930s and created his own visually powerful, technically sophisticated, and stylistically innovative artworks as part of the New Deal Arts Project’s national mural program. InBen Shahn’s New Deal Murals: Jewish Identity in the American Scene author Diana L. Linden demonstrates that Shahn mined his Jewish heritage and left-leaning politics for his style and subject matter, offering insight into his murals’ creation and their sometimes complicated reception by officials, the public, and the press. In four chapters, Linden presents case studies of select Shahn murals that were created from 1933 to 1943 and are located in public buildings in New York, New Jersey, and Missouri. She studies Shahn’s famous untitled fresco for the Jersey Homesteads—a utopian socialist cooperative community populated with former Jewish garment workers and funded under the New Deal—Shahn’s mural for the Bronx Central Post Office, a fresco Shahn proposed to the post office in St. Louis, and a related one-panel easel painting titled The First Amendment located in a Queens, New York, post office. By investigating the role of Jewish identity in Shahn’s works, Linden considers the artist’s responses to important issues of the era, such as President Roosevelt’s opposition to open immigration to the United States, New York’s bustling garment industry and its labor unions, ideological concerns about freedom and liberty that had signifcant meaning to Jews, and the encroachment of censorship into American art. Linden shows that throughout his public murals, Shahn literally painted Jews into the American scene with his subjects, themes, and compositions. Readers interested in Jewish American history, art history, and Depression-era American culture will enjoy this insightful volume.

'Living as Form' grew out of a major exhibition at Creative Time in New York City. Like the exhibition, the book is a landmark survey of more than 100 projects selected by a 30-person curatorial advisory team; each project is documented by a selection of colour images.

Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission not only documented the political violence of the 1980s and 1990s but also gave Peruvians a unique opportunity to examine the causes and nature of that violence. In Art from a Fractured Past, scholars and artists expand on the commission's work, arguing for broadening the definition of the testimonial to include various forms of artistic production as documentary evidence. Their innovative focus on representation offers new and compelling perspectives on how Peruvians experienced those years and how they have attempted to come to terms with the memories and legacies of violence. Their findings about Peru offer insight into questions of art, memory, and truth that resonate throughout Latin America in the wake of "dirty wars" of the last half century. Exploring diverse works of art, including memorials, drawings, theater, film, songs, painted wooden retablos (three-dimensional boxes), and fiction, including an acclaimed graphic novel, the contributors show that art, not constrained by literal truth, can generate new opportunities for empathetic understanding and solidarity. Contributors. Ricardo Caro Cárdenas, Jesús Cossio, Ponciano del Pino, Cynthia M. Garza, Edilberto Jímenez Quispe, Cynthia E. Milton, Jonathan Ritter, Luis Rossell, Steve J. Stern, María Eugenia Ulfe, Víctor Vich, Alfredo Villar