Larger Than Life: Mural Studies

This exhibition complements “Celebrating Heroes: American Mural Studies of the 1930s and 1940s from the Steven and Susan Hirsch Collection,” organized by the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College. President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs included several designed to employ artists in a variety of fields, paying them to paint murals across the country. They made many of their best known murals for post offices, under the U.S. Treasury Department’s Section of Fine Arts. Murals were and are works of art that we often encounter in our everyday lives, which makes it easy for them to spark controversy when times change. It also means they bring fine art into the public sphere, inspiring us to go about our day-to-day business.