WHEN ART WORKED: The New Deal, Art, and Democracy

Text by Roger G. Kennedy
An Illustrated Documentary by David Larkin

“As usual, Roger Kennedy has hit the nail on the head with this remarkably clear look at the art that came out of one of our darkest hours, an art that not only expressed the struggle, but now stands for much of how we understand it.”
–– Ken Burns

In text and more than 460 color and black-and-white images, WHEN ART WORKED tells how we as a people have summoned ourselves to a community of interest, especially, though not only, in times of war or privation. At the center of the story is the New Deal, when artists as citizens worked to enhance our pride in, and commitment to, each other and to our  natural and cultural heritage. From the outset of the nation, art had built constituencies for the preservation of our most revered natural areas and places of extraordinary historic and cultural significance, thereby helping to create a National Park System. Great presidents such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln inspired Franklin Roosevelt to encourage artists to draw the national community together around common symbols, purposes, and ideals. The book chronicles the New Deal’s mobilization of artists to help reanimate our musical, theatrical, pictorial, sculptural, and craft traditions, as it assisted artists of landscape and citiscape to do their best work in the public interest. As one artist, Gutzon Borglum, wrote at the time, art helped “coax the soul of America back to life”.   

Roger G. Kennedy is the former Director of the National Park Service and is Director Emeritus of the National Museum of American History.  He has written seventeen books and many articles on the history and architecture of the United States. He lives in Maryland.