I arrived in Provo, UT, on an unseasonably warm May afternoon to photograph Everett Thorpe’s New Deal-era mural “Early and Modern Provo,” which hangs near the entrance to the J. Will Robinson Federal Building.

To my surprise, the two guards at the entrance told me the Thorpe mural was going to be moved to the Frank E. Moss Courthouse in Salt Lake City in the next few weeks. While they wouldn’t speak on the record, one of them asked me why a mural centered around Provo was going to be moved to a building in Salt Lake City.

In Springville, another New Deal-era Utah mural, this one commissioned in the 1930s for the outer eastern wall of the Springville Museum of Art, was painted over by locals before it was even finished.

It remains there, entombed under layers of paint.

Almost a century after a number of Depression-era murals were commissioned throughout Utah, their fates remain tenuous.

Dr. Erika Doss, a professor at the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at The University of Texas at Dallas, said the point of commissioning art during the Great Depression was to give artists work, but also to create “public art as a cultural democracy for the American people.”

Utah received a high number of New Deal projects relative to its size during the Great Depression, according to Dr. Richard Walker, director of the Living New Deal Project and a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He attributes this to Utah’s progressive politics at the time. “New Deal artworks were meant to have an uplifting and educational purpose for the communities that hosted them,” according to Dr. Gray Brechin, founder of the Living New Deal Project. Most of them were not controversial and depicted local industries and labor.

New Deal administrators were mindful of regional sensitivities and tried to use artists who would not upset local communities, according to Dr. Chris Shaw, a historian at the Living New Deal Project. “They wanted this art to be art the public liked,” he said. “So, very little abstract art was being produced.”

In fact, Doss said that New Deal murals done for post offices had to follow specific mandates regarding their subject matter.

However, conflicts did emerge, according to Doss. In 1937, Colorado artist Frank Mechau painted a mural, now housed in the Clinton Federal Building in Washington, D.C., called “Dangers of the Mail.” It consists of a collection of scenes where Native Americans are massacring white settlers, including one scene set in Utah.
In 2005, after federal employees complained about the subject matter, a lightweight metal curtain was placed in front of it, allowing those who wish to view it to simply pull the curtain aside. “This is an afterlife that allows the mural to survive,” Doss said.

Dr. Vern Swanson, former director of the Springville Museum of Art, said that Gordon Cope, the artist who began the Springville mural, specialized in landscapes and was a “jack Mormon.” Swanson’s recollection was that Cope had allegedly impregnated a local Springville woman and thus alienated members of the community. The resulting backlash, which according to Swanson had little to do with the subject-matter of the mural, meant it was pushed into obscurity. “It was one of those quiet things,” Swanson said.

Swanson said that the subject of Cope’s mural was the Ironton Steel Plant that had been constructed in Springville. During a remodel of the east wing, Swanson and local resident Stanley Burningham cut through plywood and layers of paint, revealing a few square inches of the mural. “It would have cost a lot of money to have all the paint cleaned off,” he said.

Not all erasure was dramatic, according to Walker. “We’ve stumbled on several examples of murals painted over or removed at the time or soon after,” he said. Sometimes the local postmaster disliked a mural, a school got a new coat of paint, or a building was sold.

The Cope mural erasure wasn’t unique, according to Shaw. In 1934, Clifford Wight’s multi-panel mural in San Francisco in Coit Tower, titled “Steelworker,” caused an uproar. Part of the mural included a hammer and sickle, as a way to examine American economic systems. When Wight refused to alter it, federal park workers destroyed it.

Two other New Deal-era murals in Utah quietly endure. In the Beaver Post Office, John W. Beauchamp’s “Life on the Plains,” circa 1943, hangs in the main hall. Similarly, in the Helper Post Office, Jenne Magafan’s mural “A Typical Western Town,” completed in 1941, is also on display. Neither one has a plaque identifying it to the public and both blend into the background. “So much of the New Deal landscape is invisible,” said Brechin.

Not every Utah New Deal-era mural faded into the woodwork. The murals in the Utah State Capitol Rotunda, designed by Lee Greene Richards, and executed by a team of Utah artists including Gordon Cope, Henry Rasmusen, Waldo Midgley, and Ranch Kimball, are central to the building’s public identity.

Lynn Fausett’s 1940 “Barrier Canyon” mural has had its own strange odyssey. Fausett, a Price native, led a WPA team that documented Fremont pictographs in Horseshoe Canyon in 1940 and then transferred them onto two massive canvases. The resulting two-part mural traveled to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, sat in Denver storage for two decades, and eventually returned to Utah through a trade with the Denver Art Museum. The smaller Holy Ghost Panel hangs at the Prehistoric Museum in Price; the main 65-foot canvas is now on display at the Natural History Museum of Utah. (For a more detailed history of the Barrier Canyon mural, see the Salt Lake Tribune’s 2011 account.) Fausett also painted murals at the Price Municipal Building, previously explored in 15 Bytes as part of Shawn Rossiter’s The Price of Art: A Walk Around, and they continue to draw interest.

Like most of the New Deal-era murals commissioned in Utah, Thorpe’s mural in Provo was painted especially for the building, which was originally the local post office. Shortly after speaking with the guards there, I saw an article in the Salt Lake Tribune indicating that the government intends to sell the Robinson Building, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. As Swanson said, “taste destroys more artwork than all the fires, wars, and floods.”

In response to an email from 15 Bytes, a GSA spokesperson confirmed that the J. Will Robinson Federal Building is being expedited for disposition. As part of that process, the GSA has had the Thorpe mural evaluated by art conservation professionals in conjunction with the requirements of Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. If the mural is moved, the GSA plans to relocate it to another federal building to “ensure it remains publicly accessible.”

That guard’s question stayed with me. If a Provo mural is moved to a Salt Lake City courthouse, is it still public art about Provo?

It wasn’t always this way. During the Great Depression, Americans were fond of the art and buildings built under the auspices of the New Deal, according to Doss. After World War II ended, the country’s attention drifted. “Americans have the memory lifespan of a gnat,” she said ruefully. “We are trying to get people to recognize a significant part of American art, when there was federal patronage.”

Whether they’re in transit, museums, government buildings, or buried under paint, these murals represent a high-water mark for government support for the arts. “Art doesn’t change, people’s attitudes towards it change,” Doss said.

Zach Abend

Zach Abend is a Utah-based freelance journalist whose work focuses on the American Southwest, public memory, religion, culture, and overlooked regional histories. His reporting and features have appeared in Salt Lake City Weekly, Religion Unplugged, and other publications.