A Works Progress Administration fresco depicting life in California, painted for the Coit Tower, in San Francisco, in 1934.

A W.P.A. mural showing figures of the American Revolutionary War, by Eitaro Ishigaki, at the Harlem Courthouse, in New York, 1938.

*Autumn,* by Marguerite Zorach, at the post office in Ripley, Tennessee, 1940.

Georgette Seabrooke at work on *Recreation in Harlem,* in the nurses’ recreation room at the Harlem Hospital Center, in New York, circa 1936.

*Coal Mining,* by Richard Hay Kenah, at the post office in Bluefield, Virginia, 1942.

*Mississippi Packets,* by William E. L. Bunn, at the post office in Hickman, Kentucky, 1940.

*Contemporary Justice and Woman,* by Emil Bisttram, at the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building, in Washington, D.C., 1937.

Lucile Lloyd at work on *Origin and Development of the Name of the State of California,* in the State Building, in Los Angeles, 1936.

*Portrait of Contemporary DeWitt,* by William Traher, at the post office in DeWitt, Arkansas, 1941.

*The Life of George Washington,* a series by Victor Arnautoff, at George Washington High School, in San Francisco, 1936.

*Discovery of Ore,* by Betty Carney, at the post office in Chisholm, Minnesota, 1941.

Edward Laning at work on *The Role of the Immigrant in the Industrial Development of America,* in the dining hall of the Administration Building on Ellis Island, in New York, circa 1937.

*Life on the Lake,* by Ethel Edwards, at the post office in Lake Providence, Louisiana, 1942.

*Fishing,* by Ralph Frizzell, at the Nathan Clifford School, in Portland, Maine, 1940.

*Service to the Farmer,* by Davenport Griffen, at the post office in Carmi, Illinois, 1939.

Rockwell Kent standing in front of *Mail Service in the Arctic,* one of two murals he painted in what is now the William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building, in Washington, D.C., 1937.

*Harvest,* by Joe Jones, at the post office in Charleston, Missouri, 1939.

The Art of the New Deal

Long before East Wing demolitions and Trumpian Arc de Triomphes, Franklin D. Roosevelt commissioned a series of murals to employ artists amid the Great Depression. A social-media account pays tribute

By Alexander Nazaryan

The first message from @NewDealMurals, an account on the social-media site formerly known as Twitter, came on January 10, 2025. It showed an image of a mural painted at a post office in Lake Worth, Florida, by Joseph D. Myers, who earned a $1,000 prize upon winning the commission. The mural, which Myers finished in 1947, is titled Settler Fighting Alligator in Rowboat.

Rendered in the lush social-realism sensibility of the Works Progress Administration—which gave employment to thousands of writers and artists throughout the Great Depression—it shows two men in a boat beating back an alligator, one with a stick and the other with a rifle. A hound perched on the boat’s stern bares its teeth at the gator, perhaps somewhat ill-advisedly. It is not a fair contest, after all. American life rarely is.