ABSTRACT
Federal art exemplified the outlook of the New Deal and further modified it through public discussion of a democratized culture. This chapter explores the key problems of political legitimation, drawing on a number of European theorists. It examines the discourses through which government officials—including President Franklin D. Roosevelt himself—sought to link their arts policies to a distinctive national identity. Cultural patronage for forms of craft production was a relatively peripheral component of state intervention, making it an easier target. On this basis, Roosevelt was denied the opportunity to institute a national artistic tradition in his own image. This chapter focuses on the Commission of Fine Arts, an institution that suffered a decline in stature under the New Deal, that illustrates the wide-ranging forms of the legitimation crisis. It argues that the state itself was negotiating the difficulties, a process reflected on a smaller scale in official arts bodies.
