"TOWN DESTROYER" MILL VALLEY FILM FESTIVAL
October 8, 8pm, Sequoia Theater, Mill Valley, California
October 14, 1:15pm, Rafael Theater, San Rafael, California
October 15, 1:45pm, Roxie Theater, San Francisco, California
VIRTUAL SCREENINGS, October 6-16 12am EDT
What happens when art no longer reflects current societal views? This is the focus of Town Destroyer, a film about the New Deal muralist Victor Arnautoff’s 1936 work, "The Life of Washington,” a high school mural that became a media firestorm. Some students, parents, and observers found the depictions of slavery and Native American genocide offensive, demanding that the San Francisco School Board remove or destroy the mural. Identity politics gone off the rails—or a justified blow to a lingering American “colonized mentality"? Filmmakers Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman feature students, historians, artists, activists—(and the Living New Deal, which strongly opposed censoring the mural.)
The screening on October 8 will be followed by a panel discussion with the filmmakers and special guests. INFORMATION AND TICKETS | VIEW TRAILER
JOIN US via ZOOM Living New Deal Webinars
Tuesday, October 11, 2022, 5pm-6pm PDT (8pm EDT)
"The Federal Theatre: Revisiting the Dream"
with Susan Quinn and Dan Jacobs
The Federal Theater Project put starving unemployed actors, directors, set designers, stagehands and writers back to work. Susan Quinn and Dan Jacobs retell the story in their play called Enter Hallie, which intertwines Federal Theater Director Hallie Flanagan’s private struggles with her public quest to create innovative theater for hundreds of thousands. Susan and Dan will mix readings from the play with a discussion of Federal Theater history, as told in Quinn’s book, Furious Improvisation. Free. REGISTER
COMING ATTRACTIONS FROM THE LIVING NEW DEAL
Tuesday, November 15, 2022 5pm-6pm PST (8pm EST) "Painting the Mail: Post Office Art of the New Deal" with Barbara Bernstein The New Deal didn’t just decorate post offices. It celebrated them. Murals, bas reliefs and sculptures depict letters being written, mailed, sorted, transported, delivered, read and shared. These artworks are increasingly imperiled as post offices are sold and repurposed. Barbara Bernstein, the Living New Deal's Public Art Specialist and founder of the New Deal Art Registry, offers a vision for the reuse of these buildings that preserves both the artworks and the sense of community that post offices can provide. Free. REGISTER
Tuesday, December 6, 2022, 5pm-6pm PST
"Reality Makes Them Dream: Revisiting New Deal-Era Photography" with Josie Johnson and Emilia Mickevicius Photography from the New Deal-era is often associated with mirroring the bleak realities of the Great Depression. Yet, the photography is remarkably varied, using the raw material of the visible world as a point of departure for viewers’ imaginations, venturing into the poetic and surreal. Join us as we examine how the works of WPA photographers like Sybil Anikeef, Sonya Noskowiak, Edward Weston and others complicate and add dimension to understanding art and culture in the US in the 1930s.
Josie Johnson, PhD. is the Capital Group Foundation Curatorial Fellow for Photography at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, where she is currently preparing her exhibition "Reality Makes Them Dream: Photography 1929-1941." Emilia Mickevicius, PhD. is a photography historian and curator in the Photography department of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She has contributed to numerous exhibitions at SFMOMA, including "A Living for Us All: Artists and the WPA" in 2022. Free.REGISTER
The Living New Deal documents the vast legacy the New Deal (1933-1942) left to America
and the spirit of public service that inspired it.
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The Living New Deal
Department of Geography
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720
