WPA MUSEUM PROJECT
The 1930s witnessed one of the longest and deepest periods of economic devastation in modern history. To combat the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised a “New Deal” for the American people through government programs aimed at providing relief and recovery to the unemployed. One of the most famous of these New Deal agencies was the Works Progress Administration (WPA), tasked with carrying out public works projects such as the construction of bridges, roads, school buildings, dams, swimming pools, and the like.
The WPA existed from 1935 through 1943, spending over $12 billion (equivalent to around $280 billion today) and employing over nine million individuals across the United States.
WPA workers repairing Massachusetts Street in Lawrence, Kansas (Source: Kansas State Historical Society)
1939 Kansas WPA Museum Extension Project catalog cover (Source: Kansas State Historical Society)
The WPA took a broad view of the idea of “workers,” with special programs devised for writers, musicians, actors, and artists. “Why not?” asked President Roosevelt, when criticized for including creative industry workers in his recovery effort. “They are human beings. They have to live.” The WPA administered four main programs aimed at the arts and cultural pursuits – the Federal Art Project, the Federal Writers Project, the Federal Music Project, and the Federal Theater Project.
However, one of the lesser-known WPA programs that employed artisans and craftworkers was the Museum Extension Project (MEP), which provided hand-made visual aids for schools, libraries, and museums. Operating in 23 states, the project was sometimes also called the Museum Project or the Visual Aid Project. Museum Projects were typically administered under the Professional and Service Division of the WPA within each state. Kansas had one of the more productive MEPs, employing more than 200 individuals in workshops and offices in at least ten towns, and creating over 15,000 individual items that were placed in at least 60 institutions around the state.
The most popular and recognizable products of the Kansas MEP program were sets of dolls clothed in traditional cultural and historical costumes.
The program also produced a variety of color print sets on topics like wildflowers of Kansas, historical costumes, and Kansas landmark prints, many designed by noted Kansas printmakers Margaret Whittemore and Avis Chitwood.
Other educational arts & crafts items created by the project include models of agricultural and industrial implements, transportation models, weaving kits, and furniture replicas.
All Nations Figures or Foreign Costume Figurines (Greece and Sweden), Kansas Museum Extension Project, ca. 1938 (Source: Marshall County Historical Society, Marysville, KS)
Margaret Whittemore, “Pony Express Station, Marysville,” Kansas Museum Extension Project, ca. 1937 (Source: Pony Express Barn and Museum, Marysville, KS)
Dioramas, 1941 Kansas Museum Extension Project catalog (Source: Kansas Historical Society Archives)
The Kansas MEP also constructed three sets of dioramas – “Prehistoric Animals,” “Kansas History,” and “Early Indian Life in Kansas” series. The “Early Indian Life in Kansas” series consisted of the six scenes depicted in this online exhibit – “Cheyenne Buffalo Hunt,” “Kansa Harvest,” “Osage Elk Hunt,” “Pawnee Pottery Making,” Comanches on the March,” and “Kiowa Eagle Dance.” Dioramas were a popular visual educational tool at the time, in an era well before screens and other electronic tools could be regularly used in the classroom. The 1939 Kansas MEP catalog asserted: “This realistic presentation makes the subject, which is now remote, more vital to both knowledge and appreciation.”
The MEP also attempted to reach museums in every county in Kansas, either lending their materials to existing local museums or establishing new local museums in counties where one did not exist (often in local schools). A number of libraries, local museums, and schools around the state currently have collections of these MEP dolls, prints, dioramas, and other items in their collections, including the Pony Express Barn and Museum in Marysville, Kansas.
