WPA Impressions: The Reality of the American Dream

 The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art is holding an exhibition of
artworks representing America’s past, called “WPA Impressions: The Reality of
the American Dream.” This exhibition, inspired by The Great Gatsby, attempts to show human experience through
artworks from the 1930s. The Great Gatsby
depicted life during the “roaring twenties,” America’s most prosperous decade.
Following that was a period of economic failure and disastrous drought, which
prompted the development of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) by the U.S.
government in 1935. This helped many American artists attain reasonable wages
at the time of the Great Depression. It also provided meaningful and insightful
productions of the realities that shattered the American dream at that time.
Artists displayed the good and bad everyday reality and hardships of the common
man. The exhibition shows artworks spanning from feelings of isolation, woeful faces and desolate landscapes to
images of revelry, ambition and hope for better times to come.

What: “WPA Impressions: The Reality of the American Dream” exhibit.

When/Where: On view through July 27. Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, 1430 Johnson Ln., Eugene.

Info: For more info, visit jsma.uoregon.edu.