 Upon taking office in March 1933, FDR moved immediately to regulate the banks, provide relief to the poor and get the country back to work. He summoned Congress to a 3-month session and successfully pushed through a series of emergency measures to right the economy. In all, Congress passed 77 laws during Roosevelt’s first 100 days. In his first radio address to the American people, FDR seemed to take a breath, saying, “We all wanted the opportunity of a little quiet thought to examine and assimilate in a mental picture the crowding events of the hundred days, which had been devoted to the starting of the wheels of the New Deal. ”The first one hundred days” became the benchmark by which of all US presidents have been measured ever since.
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By Gray Brechin
Prior to the 1929 stock market crash, virtually all public art had endorsed the benignity and legitimacy of the American Dream, often using allegorical figures of Progress, Abundance and Justice. No market existed for artists who might question it. But in 1934, the depths of the Great Depression, Roosevelt opened a window for those artists who might dissent, giving them both patronage and exhibition space without precedent in the United States.
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By David Steinberg
I produced a concert, “Tunes From Our Backyard,” based on my exploration of WPA California Folk Music Project. I hope it will be another link in the chain that connects California’s folk music history and the legacy of the New Deal. READ MORE
By Deborah Gardner
FDR's Labor Secretary Frances Perkins fought for working people. Tomlin Perkins Coggeshall dedicated himself to preserving his grandmother’s remarkable legacy. READ MORE |
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Living New Deal Webinars - Via Zoom
“Revolutionary Art on Telegraph Hill"
with Dr. Robert Cherny and Harvey Smith
Tuesday, January 28, 2025, 5pm PST
In 1934, working for the Public Works of Art Project, the first of the New Deal art programs, 25 master artists and their assistants painted 27 murals inside San Francisco’s iconic Coit Tower.  Communist symbols in some of the murals sparked the first of many national controversies over New Deal art.
Historian Dr. Robert W. Cherny is professor emeritus of history at San Francisco State University. He has authored many books, including Victor Arnatuoff and the Politics of Art (2017), Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend (2023), and San Francisco Reds: Communists in the Bay Area. His new book is The Coit Tower Murals: New Deal Art and Political Controversy in San Francisco (University of Illinois Press, 2024). New Deal historian Harvey Smith, who wrote the interpretative signage for the Coit Tower murals, is author of Berkeley and the New Deal (Arcadia Publishing, 2014) and Project Advisor to the Living New Deal. FREE. REGISTER
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S aint Louis Art Museum
"Hidden Histories: Rediscovering the Federal Art Project"
with Dr. John Ott and Dr. Amy Torbert
Tuesday, February 4, 2025, 5pm
When the FAP ended in 1943, the Saint Louis Art Museum received a trove of 256 prints, drawings, watercolors and paintings. The exhibition draws from this rich collection to explore how this federal program expanded opportunities to create and encounter art in many different communities, some of which historically lacked the necessary infrastructure and support for the arts. Works by African American, Asian American, female-identifying and immigrant artists testify to the New Deal’s ambition to nourish individuals and communities through the arts.
John Ott is Professor of Art History at James Madison University and Amy Torbert is the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Associate Curator of American Art at the Saint Louis Art Museum and co-curator, with Clare Kobasa, of the museum’s current exhibition The Work of Art: The Federal Art Project, 1935–1943. Their conversation will offer a behind-the-scenes look at the planning process for this show, relate forgotten and untold stories from our nation's artistic past and illuminate neglected contributions from women, immigrant and minority artists. FREE. REGISTER
 "Energy, Entropy and the New Deal"
with Dr. James K. Galbraith
Tuesday, February 25, 2025, 5pm PT
Key to understanding the New Deal is understanding the critical role of resources: the rise of oil and hydro and eventually, nuclear power and the decline of coal, railroads and the center cities—all of which were integral to the Depression and then to the New Deal's reconstruction of America—electrification, paved roads, bridges and tunnels; airfields, trains, ships, and aircraft carriers.
Dr. James K. Galbraith is a professor of Government at the University of Texas, Austin, where he currently heads the Texas Inequality Project. He previously served as the Executive Director of the Congressional Join Economic Committee and of House Banking Committee. Dr. Galbraith’s books include Inequality: What Everyone Needs to Know (2016); The End of Normal: The Great Crisis and the Future of Growth (2014); Inequality and Instability: A Study of the World Economy Just Before the Great Crisis (2012). His newest book is Entropy Economics, The Living Basis of Value and Production, co-authored with Jing Chen, (University of Chicago Press). REGISTER
In-Person Events
 The Concord Historical Society
with David Steinberg and Friends
Sunday, February 23, 2015, 2pm PT
This live concert showcases songs, images and artifacts from the WPA California Folk Music Project. INFO AND TICKETS
LOCATION: Concord Museum and Event Center, 128 Clayton Road, Concord, CA
 gallupARTS
Gallup New Deal Art Virtual Museum
Saturday, March 29, 2025, 9am-8pm MST
The virtual museum offers a deep dive into Gallup’s New Deal's artistic legacy through multiple modes of interpretation and makes available important research and sources on Native American New Deal art. Celebrate the launch of the online museum during tours, talks, crafts, music and free family activities. MORE INFO
LOCATION: Various venues, Downtown Gallup, NM
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By Living New Deal
Wildfires around Los Angeles have wrought unfathomable destruction. In the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, the fires damaged or destroyed more than 7,000 structures in the town of Altadena, including at least two of New Deal provenance. READ MORE
Tell us about your favorite New Deal site. Send us a first-person story of 100 (or so) words about your favorite New Deal site and why you chose it. Send your submissions to: [email protected]. Thanks!
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Some links may limit access for nonsubscribers. Please support local journalism, if you can.
How Biden Surprised Progressives
To the departing president, F.D.R. seemed a guiding, if often elusive, star.
By Jess Bidgood
The New York Times, January 15, 2025
Jimmy Carter’s Economic Legacy
Carter’s legacy demands a more critical examination. His presidency marked the beginning of a fundamental shift away from the New Deal liberalism and toward the market-oriented framework that would come to characterize neoliberalism.
By Christopher Simmonds
American Prospect, January 2, 2025
My Last Column
So is there a way out of the grim place we’re in? What I believe is that while resentment can put bad people in power, in the long run it can’t keep them there.
By Paul Krugman
New York Times, December 9, 2024
How Democrats Can Regain the Working Class
FDR stated: “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred." Roosevelt’s more centrist supporters suggested he moderate his words. Roosevelt rebuffed them. Three days later, he won what is still the most overwhelming victory in American political history.
By Harold Meyerson
American Prospect, December 2, 2024
The first female Cabinet secretary is granted a national monument
President Biden signed the proclamation establishing Frances Perkins National Monument in Newcastle, Maine. Perkins, FDR’s Labor Secretary, is credited with helping establish the Social Security Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act and the National Labor Relations Act.
By Associated Press
December 17, 2024
This Solar Panel Kills Fascists
The organizers behind New York’s Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA) make a striking claim. They argue that union-made renewables and credits to low-income energy users can slow the rise of the far right and that, if implemented seriously, the BPRA in New York State can prove it.
By Gabriel Hetland
The Nation, December 9, 2024
90 years later, FDR's groundbreaking program is part of our everyday lives
Today, a little more than three years after President Biden signed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which authorized a $1.2 trillion investment in the nation's infrastructure, it's worth remembering investments made more than 80 years ago we use every day.
By David Holthaus
Soapbox Cincinnati, December 10, 2024
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"Necessitous men are not free men. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made."
— FDR Inaugural Address
January 11, 1944
YOUR DONATIONS KEEP THE NEW DEAL SPIRIT ALIVE.
The Living New Deal thanks you for your generous support!
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