Robert Bruce Inverarity was an American artist, art educator, museum director, author, and anthropologist. He was the Washington State Director of the Federal Arts Project from 1936 to 1939 and the Washington Arts Project from 1939 to 1941, working with many noted Pacific Northwest artists. Fascinated with the Indian tribes of the Northwest from early youth, he amassed a major collection of North Pacific Coast Native art and authored several works on the subject.
Robert Bruce Inverarity, self-portrait, 1938. Robert Bruce Inverarity papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
San Francisco Cable Car, woodblock print,1935, by Robert Bruce Inverarity.
Aurora Sky, Robert Bruce Inverarity, pastel, 1931.
The Federal Art Project (1935–1943) was a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. Under national director Holger Cahill, it was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and the largest of the New Deal art projects. It was created not as a cultural activity, but as a relief measure to employ artists and artisans to create murals, easel paintings, sculpture, graphic art, posters, photography, theatre scenic design, and arts and crafts. The WPA Federal Art Project established more than 100 community art centers throughout the country, researched and documented American design, commissioned a significant body of public art without restriction to content or subject matter, and sustained some 10,000 artists and craft workers during the Great Depression. According to American Heritage, “Something like 400,000 easel paintings, murals, prints, posters, and renderings were produced by WPA artists during the eight years of the project’s existence, virtually free of government pressure to control subject matter, interpretation, or style.”
Eagle and palette design regarded as the logo of the Federal Art Project
Federal Art Project
Poster summarizing Federal Art Project employment and activities (November 1, 1936)
The Workers (c. 1935), a wall hanging created by Florence Kawa for the Milwaukee Handicraft Project, was presented to Eleanor Roosevelt