The Art of the Deal

President Obama has suggested in not so many words the need for a “New Deal” for America today to, we hope, match the success of FDR’s “New Deal” of the post-Depression age. A good way of looking back at that first “New Deal” and deciding on whether a new “New Deal” is the right prescription for an ailing America might be through the government-supported arts of the 1930s. Revisiting the New Deal: Government Patronage and the Fine Arts, 1933-1943 at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, The University of Oklahoma, Norman reminds us of the vast misery of the Depression years and how art not only helped the people of that time understand, but also helped some of them survive. In these images from the past may reside the key to our future. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "The Art of the Deal."

[Image: Joseph Hirsch (U.S., 1910-1981), Street Scene, 1938. Oil on canvas, 22 x 24 in. Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, The University of Oklahoma, Norman; WPA Collection, 1942.]

[Many thanks to the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, for providing me with the image above from and press materials for Revisiting the New Deal: Government Patronage and the Fine Arts, 1933-1943, which runs through May 9, 2010.]