Celebrating Heroes: American Mural Studies of the 1930s and 1940s

The 1930s and 1940s were a golden age for murals in America where the everyday worker rose to the status of a primary hero. The Great Depression forged a renewed belief in the centrality of the laborer, and the federal government sponsored numerous work programs, including those for visual artists. Wall paintings about larger-than-life miners, farmers, and others covered walls in public buildings across the country. Preliminary ideas played out in sketches, however, and around sixty of these are displayed in this exhibition, which honors gifts donated by Susan and Steven Hirsch, class of 1971.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website