{"id":103577,"date":"2026-06-07T08:21:46","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T15:21:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=103577"},"modified":"2026-06-08T12:35:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T19:35:04","slug":"the-strange-afterlife-of-utahs-new-deal-murals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/the-strange-afterlife-of-utahs-new-deal-murals\/","title":{"rendered":"The Strange Afterlife of Utah’s New Deal Murals"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I arrived in Provo, UT, on an unseasonably warm May afternoon to photograph Everett Thorpe\u2019s New Deal-era mural “Early and Modern Provo,” which hangs near the entrance to the J. Will Robinson Federal Building.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

It remains there, entombed under layers of paint.<\/p>\n

Almost a century after a number of Depression-era murals were commissioned throughout Utah, their fates remain tenuous.<\/p>\n

Dr. Erika Doss, a professor at the Edith O\u2019Donnell 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 \u201cpublic art as a cultural democracy for the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s progressive politics at the time. \u201cNew Deal artworks were meant to have an uplifting and educational purpose for the communities that hosted them,\u201d according to Dr. Gray Brechin, founder of the Living New Deal Project. Most of them were not controversial and depicted local industries and labor.<\/p>\n

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. \u201cThey wanted this art to be art the public liked,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, very little abstract art was being produced.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, Doss said that New Deal murals done for post offices had to follow specific mandates regarding their subject matter.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cDangers of the Mail.\u201d It consists of a collection of scenes where Native Americans are massacring white settlers, including one scene set in Utah.
\nIn 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. \u201cThis is an afterlife that allows the mural to survive,\u201d Doss said.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cjack Mormon.\u201d Swanson\u2019s 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. \u201cIt was one of those quiet things,\u201d Swanson said.<\/p>\n

Swanson said that the subject of Cope\u2019s 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. \u201cIt would have cost a lot of money to have all the paint cleaned off,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Not all erasure was dramatic, according to Walker. \u201cWe\u2019ve stumbled on several examples of murals painted over or removed at the time or soon after,\u201d he said. Sometimes the local postmaster disliked a mural, a school got a new coat of paint, or a building was sold.<\/p>\n

The Cope mural erasure wasn\u2019t unique, according to Shaw. In 1934, Clifford Wight\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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Two other New Deal-era murals in Utah quietly endure. In the Beaver Post Office, John W. Beauchamp\u2019s “Life on the Plains,” circa 1943, hangs in the main hall. Similarly, in the Helper Post Office, Jenne Magafan\u2019s 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. \u201cSo much of the New Deal landscape is invisible,\u201d said Brechin.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s public identity.<\/p>\n

Lynn Fausett\u2019s 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 in the lobby of the Natural History Museum of Utah. (For a more detailed history of the Barrier Canyon mural, see the Salt Lake Tribune\u2019s 2011 account.<\/a>) Fausett also painted murals at the Price Municipal Building, previously explored in 15 Bytes as part of Shawn Rossiter\u2019s “The Price of Art: A Walk Around,”<\/a> and they continue to draw interest.<\/p>\n

Like most of the New Deal-era murals commissioned in Utah, Thorpe\u2019s 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, \u201ctaste destroys more artwork than all the fires, wars, and floods.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u201censure it remains publicly accessible.\u201d<\/p>\n

That guard\u2019s question stayed with me. If a Provo mural is moved to a Salt Lake City courthouse, is it still public art about Provo?<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t 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\u2019s attention drifted. \u201cAmericans have the memory lifespan of a gnat,\u201d she said ruefully. \u201cWe are trying to get people to recognize a significant part of American art, when there was federal patronage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether they\u2019re in transit, museums, government buildings, or buried under paint, these murals represent a high-water mark for government support for the arts. \u201cArt doesn\u2019t change, people\u2019s attitudes towards it change,\u201d Doss said.<\/p>\n

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All images courtesy of the author.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I arrived in Provo, UT, on an unseasonably warm May afternoon to photograph Everett Thorpe\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1742,"featured_media":103583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in_plain_site","category-visual_arts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_9614.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-15 13:32:51","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1742"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103577"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103593,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103577\/revisions\/103593"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}