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| Works Progress Administration Indian Arts and Crafts Board | |
|---|---|
| Name | Works Progress Administration Indian Arts and Crafts Board |
| Formation | 1930s |
| Type | Federal agency project |
| Headquarters | Washington, D.C. |
| Parent organization | Works Progress Administration |
Works Progress Administration Indian Arts and Crafts Board The Works Progress Administration Indian Arts and Crafts Board was a New Deal-era initiative linking the Works Progress Administration, Indian Arts and Crafts Board, WPA Federal Project Number One, and federal cultural policy to promote Native American arts through exhibition, sales, and preservation. It operated within a matrix of agencies including the Civilian Conservation Corps, Federal Art Project, National Park Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Smithsonian Institution, engaging artists, curators, and administrators such as John Collier, Kenneth Chapman, and partners from tribal nations like the Navajo Nation, Pueblo peoples, and Lakota. The program interwove activities on reservations, in urban centers such as New York City and Santa Fe, and at federal sites like the National Museum of the American Indian and the Anasazi State Park Museum.
The Board emerged against the backdrop of the Great Depression, the New Deal initiatives of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and reform efforts led by John Collier at the Bureau of Indian Affairs and advocacy from figures including Henrietta Llewellyn, Kenneth Chapman, and the Indian Arts Fund. Debates at hearings convened by Congress, contacts with the Smithsonian Institution, and precedents in programs like the Federal Writers' Project and Civilian Conservation Corps shaped its charter. Legislative and administrative origins tied to the WPA, the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, and interagency memoranda guided the Board’s mandate to stimulate markets for Native arts, authenticate production, and preserve traditional forms amid pressures from the railroad expansion, Hollywood, and burgeoning tourism in places like Taos Pueblo and Canyon de Chelly.
The Board was organized as a quasi-independent unit nested in the Works Progress Administration bureaucracy, coordinating regional offices in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Gallup, New Mexico, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Flagstaff, Arizona, Window Rock, Arizona, and urban galleries in Washington, D.C. and New York City. Leadership involved career officials from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, curators from the Smithsonian Institution and administrators from the Federal Art Project, with advisory input from tribal leaders, curators like Frederick Webb Hodge, and ethnologists associated with Frances Densmore and Edward Sapir. The Board established committees on authenticity, marketing, and craft pedagogy, collaborating with museums such as the Field Museum, American Museum of Natural History, and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.
Programs included craft markets, authenticity certification, artist residencies, museum exhibitions, school-based craft instruction, and documentation projects akin to the Federal Writers' Project ethnographies. The Board sponsored retail outlets and auction exhibitions in New York City, coordinated with the Santa Fe Indian Market, and organized touring exhibitions to institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Field projects recorded weaving techniques among Navajo weavers, pottery traditions of the Hopi, kachina carvings in Zuni Pueblo, and beadwork among Choctaw and Chippewa artisans, creating archives comparable to collections at the National Anthropological Archives and collections assembled by Alfred Kroeber and Ruth Benedict.
The Board’s efforts influenced economic patterns on reservations such as the Navajo Nation and among the Pueblo peoples, providing supplemental income, increasing tourist demand in hubs like Santa Fe and Taos, and shaping craft production toward marketable designs sought by buyers from New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles. It affected cultural transmission through teaching programs at mission schools, tribal schools administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and exchanges with institutions like the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. Leaders from tribes including the Hopi Tribe and Cherokee Nation negotiated representation, while artists intersected with figures from the Harlem Renaissance and collectors tied to the American Indian Movement in later decades.
Critics cited tensions with tribal sovereignty, asserting that federal authentication and market standards imposed external aesthetics derived from museum professionals associated with the Smithsonian Institution, Field Museum, and curators like Kenneth Chapman. Debates involved legislators in Congress and activists in movements linked to the American Indian Movement and critics influenced by scholars such as Vine Deloria Jr. and Chief Standing Bear analogues; concerns included commodification, loss of traditional secrecy tied to ceremonies at Pueblo and Hopi communities, and disputes over intellectual property also contested in courts and tribal councils. Some museums and dealers, including those in Santa Fe and Gallup, New Mexico, resisted federal regulation, leading to legal and political friction with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and state authorities.
The Board’s legacy appears in later policy instruments such as the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990, museums like the National Museum of the American Indian, and federal programs within the National Endowment for the Arts and Institute of Museum and Library Services. Its archives informed scholarship by historians and anthropologists including Francis H. Haines, Laurel Clark-style curators, and contributed to preservation practices adopted by tribal museums like the Heard Museum and the Institute of American Indian Arts. The program’s combination of market intervention, cultural documentation, and institutional partnerships influenced postwar federal-tribal relations, conservation efforts at sites like Chaco Culture National Historical Park, and contemporary debates about cultural property, authenticity, and heritage tourism in locales from Santa Fe to reservation communities.
Category:New Deal agencies Category:Native American history Category:Works Progress Administration