Treasury Relief Art Project 

         Immediately following the early May 1935 creation of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Edward Bruce applied to the agency for a Treasury-specific grant to hire 500 unemployed artists to decorate nearly 2,000 existing Treasury buildings sans art.  Bruce's Section of Painting and Sculpture in the Treasury had authority over art in new Treasury buildings, why not existing buildings as well? Bruce assigned Olin Downs to lead the project.  Dows lobbied against WPA funding when he learned that Harry Hopkins, WPA Administrator, mandated that 90% of the labor had to come from welfare rolls.  Dows wanted to create a distinction between the Treasury art project and the much larger designs of the new Federal Art Project (FAP).  Specifically, Dows sought to draw from the labor pool of already employed artists for his project; Bruce wanted these individuals to be highly qualified artists.  On July 21, 1935, the WPA established the Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP) via a grant of $530,784 to "employ about 450 artists."  

     From its inception, Bruce quarreled with Hopkins over the quality of artists to be employed for TRAP projects:  Bruce focused on the social and aesthetic importance of art; Hopkins focused on keeping artists fed.  (Note Hopkins' famous retort when asked why the government should provide jobs for unemployed artists, "Hell, they've got to eat just like other people.")  Bruce pleaded his case to his longtime artistic muse, Elinor Morgenthau, and Dows targeted the best possible artists for hire.  In the meantime, Hopkins ordered that only artists certified for relief before November 1, 1935, could be employed; this upset Bruce.  On December 6, Hopkins reduced the percentage of  WPA laborers on welfare rolls for cultural projects to 75%; this upset Mrs. Morgenthau.  The TRAP artists not on relief--25% of project employees--designed and supervised the work of the artists on relief.  Since the WPA funds could not be used for travel, the program had to use local artists.  Since it was oftentimes difficult to locate sufficiently talented muralists and sculptors, TRAP dedicated the majority of its efforts to paintings and prints.  

     In early 1936, TRAP became embroiled with the FAP over the recruitment and retention of project artists, particularly in the mecca of American art, New York City.  TRAP officials accused the FAP of luring away the best TRAP artists by offering them supervisory positions; FAP officials accused Dows of initially hiring more than double the non-relief quota of artists.  TRAP elected to hire fewer workers of higher quality and "stretch" the original funding as far as possible:  as of April 1936, TRAP had hired 289 of the anticipated 450 artists.  Two art groups founded in New York City in 1936--the American Artists Congress and the Artists Coordination Committee--criticized TRAP for its elite hiring standards as well as the speed of hiring.  In December 1936, the WPA further impacted TRAP's quality standard by reducing non-relief employment from 25% to 10%, thereby impacting the supervision of TRAP projects.  At this time, TRAP began a deliberate phaseout of operations.  

      The majority of TRAP murals and sculptures were placed in small post offices and federal buildings, particularly facilities that had no budget for artistic enhancements.  A master artist oversaw each project and selected relief artists to assist with the work.  In his book, Federal Support for the Visual Arts:  The New Deal and Now (New York Graphic Society, Ltd. 1971), Francis V. O'Connor offered the following critique of the TRAP: 

"The procedures of the TRAP assured a high level of professional artistic competence while at the same time providing, on a small scale, much needed employment. . . . Its scope as a relief program, however, was limited and it was left to the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration--which began a month after the start of the TRAP--to meet effectively the problem of the unemployed artist."

     At its peak in mid-1936, TRAP employed 446 artists who received $69 to $103 a month for 96 hours of work.  When TRAP disbanded on June 30, 1939, the program had completed 89 murals and 65 sculpture projects as well as 10,000 easel paintings for distribution to Federal offices.  The cost of the program was $833,784.  

     Notable artists employed by TRAP included Richard Barthe, Aaron Ben-Shmuel, Paul Cadmus, William Gropper, Marion Greenwood, Rockwell Kent, Reginald Marsh, Edgar Miller, and Heinze Warneke.