Highlights of New Deal-Era Artwork in the Udall Building

David John McCosh’s pair of murals, Themes of the National Parks, highlights iconic features of the national parks in the western United States. In six vignettes, this one captures the immensity of Half Dome's granite crest in California's Yosemite National Park, flanked by two scenes in New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns; plus Wyoming's Devils Tower, Oregon's Crater Lake, and Wyoming's Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park.

 McCosh was born in 1903 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He studied at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Art Students’ League in New York City. McCosh began his teaching career as an instructor of lithography at the Art Institute of Chicago. For much of his career, McCosh was a professor of art at the University of Oregon, where he taught painting, drawing, and lithography.

McCosh believed firmly that the art of painting is rooted in observation. His artistic style evolved greatly throughout his career. He worked originally as a regionalist painter, but, upon moving to the Northwest in 1934, his style gradually became more abstract. McCosh painted murals for the Chicago World’s Fair for the Century of Progress; the U.S. Post Office in Kelso, Washington; and the U.S. Post Office in Beresford, South Dakota. He also painted several works for the U.S. National Bank in Eugene, Oregon. After his retirement in 1970, McCosh continued to live and paint in Eugene.

Henry Varnum Poor focuses on the relationships among humans, animals, and landscapes in his fresco mural Conservation of American Wildlife. Poor wrote about the impetus for this piece: “I want to deal in a poetic, or rather symbolic way, with the whole friendly relationships between men, wild birds and animals, and nature, and do honor to Audubon and Thoreau, whose work makes them in a sense the fathers of conservation.” The mural’s composition includes varied landscapes, from the Florida Everglades to the Pacific Northwest. This juxtaposition, according to Poor, “demands a formal unreality of symbolism.”

An architect, muralist, ceramist, teacher, and author, Poor was born in 1888 in Chapman, Kansas. During his career, Poor created murals for many public buildings, including the U.S. Department of Justice. His daughter Anne completed the plaster work for many of his projects, including this one. In addition to murals, Poor illustrated two of his own books, as well as Jack London’s Call of the Wild.

Kiowa dancers, drummers, and women preparing food frame the traditional harvest feast and Kiowa homes in the center of this large lunette mural. This expression of narrative includes scenes of both ceremonial and social facets of Kiowa life. 

James Auchiah, also known as Tse Koy Ate (Big Bow), was born in Meers, Oklahoma, in 1906 and attended St. Patrick’s Mission School in Anadarko, Oklahoma, before studying art at the University of Oklahoma. Auchiah was one of the Kiowa Six, a group of six Kiowa artists, along with Spencer Asah, Jack Hokeah, Stephen Mopope, Monroe Tsatoke and Lois Smoky, who created a new painting style influenced by Plains hide painting and Ledger art and further influenced by social and ceremonial scenes of Kiowa life and its oral traditions. The minimal background, flat perspective, and use of solid color fields apparent in Harvest Dance are hallmarks of the Kiowa Six painting style.

James Michael Newell focuses on the mutually supportive relationship between the territories of the United States in Insular Possessions: Virgin Islands. Newell focuses not only on the major export of the Virgin Islands—sugar cane—but also on the importance of government-sponsored services such as medical care and education.

Newell was born in 1900 in Carnegie, Pennsylvania. Throughout the 1930s, Newell completed eight murals under two New Deal programs: the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) and the Federal Arts Project (FAP). The PWAP was President Roosevelt’s first large-scale art program during the Great Depression. From December 1933 to June 1934 the program employed more than 3,000 artists from across the country. Ninety percent of the project’s funding went towards artists’ salaries. The FAP was administered by the Works Progress Administration from 1935 to 1943, and aimed to provide jobs to artists who were on relief rolls and also to acquire artwork for non-federal public buildings.

John Steuart Curry conveys the anticipation of the settlers about to establish their new lives in the Oklahoma Territory in Rush for the Oklahoma Land—1889. Men spur their horse-drawn wagons as a train passes in the background, emphasizing the contrast between tradition and innovation.

Born in 1897 rural Dunavant, Kansas, Curry was a regionalist painter who drew inspiration from the rural Midwest. Regionalism was an artistic movement of the 1930s that was fostered by commissions from the Public Works of Art Project and the Federal Art Project. Curry first gained notoriety with his 1928 painting Baptism in Kansas, which Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney purchased in 1931 for the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. In 1936, Curry became the University of Wisconsin-Madison Agricultural College’s first artist in residence, employed to promote cultural awareness and foster artistic creativity within rural communities. Later that year, Curry received commissions to create murals for the U.S. Department of the Interior as well as the U.S. Department of Justice.

Boris Gilbertson aimed to combine an accurate representation of the animals with a decorative nuance consistent with the architecture of the building. Carved by air hammer, this decorative effect is achieved through the stylization of the background elements of sky and grass and also in the linear fur of the animals. American Bison depicts part of a herd of grazing bison. The bulls and cows in the background form a protective barrier for two calves in the foreground. Gilbertson observed bison in captivity, both in zoos and in the national parks, while creating this composition. Boris Gilbertson was born in 1907 in Evanston, Illinois. He began studying sculpture in 1927 at the Art Institute of Chicago. Gilbertson was a naturalist and focused the majority of his work on animals.