Oral history interview with Thomas Hart Benton, 1972.

ArchivalResource

Oral history interview with Thomas Hart Benton, 1972.

Family background, reputation in Missouri; father's political career; trip to Joplin, early cartoonist job; Washington D.C. at turn of century; years in Paris, art movement, cafe life; populism, political and artistic; Bohemian art; capitalism and art; film work in New Jersey; effects of Armory Show; World War I naval experiences; Missouri mural; art criticism; walking tours of the South; Orozco; sculptural painting; executing a mural; New York Marxist groups, 1930s; New School mural; WPA lecture tour; homosexual influence on art world; social function of art; Joplin mural; work for Walt Disney; regionalist movement; representational artists and the War.

Transcript: 185 leaves.Tape: 3cassettes.

Related Entities

There are 3 Entities related to this resource.

United States. Works Progress Administration

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w67b4x1k (corporateBody)

Organizational History President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1935 as a part of his New Deal to curtail the Depression's effects on the United States. The WPA attempted to provide the unemployed with jobs that allowed individuals to preserve skills or talents. The Federal Writers' Project (FWP), one branch of the WPA, provided work for over 6,600 unemployed writers, journalists, edit...

Gallagher, Robert S.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6w1113c (person)

Benton, Thomas Hart, 1889-1975

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w67w6dp5 (person)

Thomas Hart Benton (April 15, 1889 – January 19, 1975) was an American painter and muralist. Along with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, he was at the forefront of the Regionalist art movement. The fluid, sculpted figures in his paintings showed everyday people in scenes of life in the United States. His work is strongly associated with the Midwestern United States, the region in which he was born and which he called home for most of his life. He also studied in Paris, lived in New York City f...