Most of the art in a new exhibition at UT Dallas has never been shown in public. It spent decades in storage after the federal program that paid for it shut down in 1943.
"New Deal Texas and the West" is on view in the university's art museum space at the Edith and Peter O'Donnell Jr. Athenaeum on the Richardson campus, and it is open today from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Crow Museum of Asian Art, which lists the show at its UT Dallas location, posts hours of 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Tuesday through Sunday and says admission is always free. The show runs through July 18, 2027.
What is on the walls
About 75 pieces come from the Dallas Museum of Art, UT Dallas said in a feature published Friday. The paintings, prints, textiles, sculpture, books and magazines were produced with federal money during the Great Depression, much of it in Texas, with other work tied to Oklahoma and New Mexico.
The exhibition fills three galleries organized around work, women and the West, and it includes pieces by Native American and Hispanic artists that are on display for the first time.
One wall holds Works Progress Administration posters that urged Americans to travel, protect wildlife and have their eyes checked. A map tracks the murals painted for nearly 70 Texas post offices and notes which ones survive. A mural Dallas-born artist Lloyd Goff painted for the post office in Cooper, Texas, shows cowboys driving free-range cattle.
A professor's first show
The curator is Erika Doss, an art history professor at UT Dallas, who timed the exhibit to the 90th anniversary of the New Deal. It is her first curated show and the third DMA collection to appear in the UT Dallas museums under a partnership between the two institutions.