ABSTRACT
The four fresco panels at the Louisiana State Exhibit Museum in Shreveport are monumental works of art depicting the agriculture, industry, and commerce that contributed to the state's economic growth in the 1930s. A way that public art received funding through the New Deal was to include the expenses for art decoration as part of the grant or loan funding for a public building. In the New Deal, the federal government included programs to fund art projects, giving artists who had lost their jobs during the Depression an opportunity to rejoin the nation's work force. Frescoes sponsored by the New Deal are of great value because the medium is no longer produced with the popularity that it enjoyed in the 1930s. Today's modern architectural designs use space more conservatively. Unlike some New Deal murals, there is little designation of place suggested by the ethnology in the works.
