May 2011

Asheville Art Museum in Asheville, NC, Features WPA Printmakers

Asheville Art Museum in Asheville, NC, is presenting the exhibit, Artists at Work: American Printmakers and the WPA, on view in Gallery 6, through Sept. 25, 2011.

This exhibition showcases prints created under the Federal Art Project, a unit of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Created in 1935 to provide economic relief to Americans during the Great Depression, the WPA offered work to the unemployed on an unprecedented scale by spending money on a wide array of programs, including highways and building construction, reforestation and rural rehabilitation. Like railroad workers, miners, farmers and anyone out of work, artists were recognized as a special group of laborers in need of financial assistance.

The era represents a very specific moment when art for the people was a truly rallying concept that resulted in wonderful woodcuts, wood engravings, linoleum cuts, etchings, lithographs and the then new “silkscreen” process. The prints in this exhibition speak to the essence of the times and document a significant phase in the printmaking history of the United States.

This exhibition was organized and curated by the Asheville Art Museum. This exhibition is sponsored by Phillip Broughton and David Smith and received additional support from Ray Griffin and Thom Robinson.

For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Museum at 828/253-3227 or visit (www.ashevilleart.org).

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