WPA

Launched in May 1935, the WPA employed thousands of American artists, writers, musicians, and actors. For the first time in this country's history, large groups of painters and sculptors, often working together on major projects such as public murals, were guaranteed jobs and paychecks. No longer burdened by unpaid bills and empty stomachs, artists could afford to buy materials and to spend time in their studios; but, of nearly equal importance, they could afford to get away from the isolation of those studios — to meet after work in cafés and bars to socialize and to argue about art.

Those dialogues led to camaraderie, solidarity, and the founding of groups such as the American Abstract Artists and the "Ten." They also inspired heated disagreements and polarization regarding abstract vs. representational art; Stalinists vs. Trotskyites; American art vs. that of Europe. The WPA provided a lifeline that almost single-handedly gave birth to the New York art world, which, 15 years later, would supplant that of Paris as the art capital of the world