Day Six: Thursday, August 8,1991

AM: Show Eight, "Taking Stock"

Yale Professor Alan Trachtenberg looks at the popularization and impact of photography.  He also presents selections from the work of Hines, Moholy-Nagy, Rodchenko, Coburn, Gutmann, Shahn, Lee, Bubley and Evans.

Professor Maren Stange explores the social documentation created by the photographers hired by the Farm Security Administration.

Followed by Q&A with Trachtenburg and Stange.

PM: "Taking Stock" and Sources

Art historian and journalist Helen Harrison looks at the public murals created by the artists of the Federal Arts Project. She cites the influence Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco in the transformation of public art from classical allegory to works that were "substantive, ideological and plastic."

Professor Robert McElvaine stresses the need for producers to look to the voices and letters of the people who lived through the period.  While the Great Depression was a period of transformation, most people were trying to get back to a sense of life as it should be.

Followed by Q&A.

Environmental writer and Harold Ickes biographer Thomas H. Watkins concludes the school schedule with a testimonial to the liberal optimism of the "disparate gaggle" of men and women who made up the New Deal.