The group of thirty named artists represented in Gallup’s New Deal art collection includes artists from Europe and artists of European descent, four Native American artists, and two Hispano artists. The collection also includes dozens of wall paintings, furniture pieces, and decorative artworks by an unknown number of uncredited Native American and Hispano artists.
This diverse makeup is by design: federal art programs were meant to foster a uniquely “American” art and visual culture, and in New Mexico, that imperative converged with the state’s popular ideology of triculturalism (which holds that the state consists of three distinct ethnic groups—Anglo/white, Hispano, and Indigenous—living harmoniously together). The grossly simplistic tricultural myth arose with New Mexico’s campaign for statehood in the 1880s, was cemented in the early 20th century by the tourism boom, and was then adopted by the New Deal.
Tinwork Light Fixture
by Uncredited Hispano Artist(s)
New Deal art administrators sought to prove the United States’ distinct and rich artistic history, heritage, and identity by promoting “pre-American” Indigenous and Spanish Colonial artistic practices. This 1936 statement by Donald Bear, regional director of the Federal Art Project, about the Portfolio of Spanish Colonial Design reveals the New Deal’s agenda with regard to Indigenous and Hispano art: “Of all of the states in this nation, New Mexico is the only one which has a genuine native art, aside from the art of the American Indian. The Spanish-Colonial art portfolio will bring to light new and original source material that has never been used before and will also prove that we have indigenous art which is comparable to that of any past civilization.”1
At the same time, New Mexico’s New Deal art programs sought to cultivate regional styles of Western American art being developed by Anglo artists in and through the Taos and Santa Fe artist colonies. In this way, the ultimate goal was to create the image of a future-forward nation building on an incomparable cultural legacy.
Though they brought artists from different traditions and cultures together and used need as the sole eligibility criterion, New Deal art programs were not necessarily equal opportunity employers. Artists were employed by federal art programs in different ways, largely along the lines of race and class: generally speaking, white, male artists were granted professional opportunities while artists of color with no formal training were treated more like technicians and manual laborers.
To this end, in terms of Gallup’s New Deal art collection, it can be helpful to group the artists represented into three different categories of involvement.
Untitled (Donkey Braying)
by Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington
One group of artists represented is comprised of coast-based, nationally known, commercially successful artists such as Albert Lorey Groll, William Robinson Leigh, and Anna Hyatt Huntington, who were not actually employed by the New Deal. Rather, they donated their work to the Gallup Art Center in support of efforts to turn the Center into a permanent art museum.
Untitled (The Coming of the Americans)
by J. R. Willis
The second group consists of the senior generation of established, well-known New Mexico artists who earned a reputation in their day as “old masters”2 of Southwestern art, such as Joseph Fleck, Józef Bakoś, Sheldon Parsons, and J. R. Willis. These artists were employed by the New Mexico Federal Art Project mainly as exhibiting artists, paid to produce work for federal art centers and traveling exhibits. In many cases, artists like these qualified for need-based programs some years and not others.
Untitled (Apache Crown Dancer)
by Allan Houser
A third category of younger, local, lesser-known artists such as Brooks Willis, Lloyd Moylan, Anna Keener Wilton, Helmuth Naumer, D. Paul Jones, Louie Ewing, Eliseo Rodriguez, Elidio Gonzales, Harrison Begay, Allan Houser, and Virginia Nye was responsible for most of the public art projects undertaken by the state’s Federal Art Project (FAP), including murals at universities, colleges, national parks, and post offices, as well as the FAP’s design portfolio publications. In turn, the New Deal shaped many of these artists’ careers. For some, like Moylan and Jones, their involvement in New Mexico’s FAP marked the apex of their artistic output. For others, such as Wilton, who would go on to head the art department of a major state university and help establish the New Mexico Arts Commission, it helped to launch their careers.
This category also includes the unknown number of uncredited artists—mostly Native American and Hispano artists—hired to produce wall paintings, furniture and decorative arts.
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Gallup and McKinley County are situated on the ancestral and current homelands of the Diné and Ashiwi peoples.
Gallup’s New Deal art collection consists of over 120 objects created, purchased, or donated from 1933 to 1942 through New Deal federal art programs administered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to support artists during the Great Depression.
The Gallup New Deal Art Virtual Museum features three types of exhibits, combining traditional and non-traditional approaches to illuminate academic, creative, and individual understandings.
Gallup’s New Deal art collection includes works by a demographically, professionally, and stylistically diverse group of named and unnamed artists.
Image Use Notice: Images of Gallup’s New Deal artworks are available to be used for educational purposes only. Non-collection images are subject to specific restrictions and identified by a © icon. Hover over the icon for copyright info. Read more
