Friday, July 13, 2012

Stamford Downtown is Rich in New Deal Paintings by James Daugherty

New Deal Art Mural (1934) by James Daugherty
at the Jeremy Richard Library at UConn Stamford 

"School Activities" shown above  and "New England Tradition"  shown below are two of seven murals painted by James Daugherty (1887-1974) for the octagonal  music room at Stamford High School. The mural was commissioned under the New Deal's Public Work of Art program and was completed in four months in 1934. 

"New England Tradition" mural by Daugherty hangs 
in the stairwell at the Ferguson Library 

The murals were retrieved in 1970 from a trash container where they had been dumped as part of a renovation.  At this time they had been cut into 30 sections. Hiram Hoelzer a New York art conservator restored six of them over a 16 year period and the city of Stamford bought them back in 2003 with major funding from the the Ruth W. Brown Foundation, the City of Stamford and the State of Connecticut 

A free brochure prepared by Ferguson Library states that "Daugherty conceived the Stamford panels to show a progression of history, using people from many ethnic groups taking part in education, sports, industry, science and the arts. Daugherty used local teachers and students as models."

Daugherty's works hang in the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Yale University and Smithsonian. 

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