Art for the People: WPA-Era Prints from the Ponemone-Frommeyer Collection

Spitaleri and Calvert Galleries | September 8, 2026 – January 10, 2027 MEMBER MORNINGS: Museum Members, join us Friday, November 6, at 9 AM for a light reception and guided tour of the exhibition. Art for the People: WPA-Era Prints from the Ponemone-Frommeyer Collection features nearly fifty prints created with a range of printmaking techniques, including lithography, wood- and linoleum-block, etching, aquatint, drypoint, and wood engraving. Collectively, the prints illustrate diverse aspects of American life in the years following the Great Depression. Post-crash America reached its lowest point in 1933, when the unemployment rate reached nearly 25%. In 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sought to get people back into the workforce through his proposed Works Progress Administration (WPA) as part of his New Deal initiative. Until its dissolution in 1943, the WPA employed more than 8.5 million people nationwide, resulting in the construction of significant public infrastructure. The program also supported literacy and art programs through its attendant Federal Art Project (FAP), one of five programs funded by Federal Project Number One. Established in 1935, the FAP was created to provide employment specifically for visual artists from diverse populations: native-born or immigrant, Black, female, Asian-American, and Latino-American. The FAP operated until America’s 1943 entry into WWII and employed thousands of painters, sculptors, muralists, printmakers, and craftspeople who’d been left jobless by the economic collapse. The Federal Art Project’s mission was twofold: to provide artists with a livable wage ($23.60 per week, equivalent to $580.00 today) so they could continue working during difficult economic times, and to make art accessible to everyday Americans (who might otherwise never have visited a gallery or museum). Some 10,000 artists produced murals and sculptures for post offices—including those in Cambridge and Pocomoke City on the Eastern Shore of Maryland—schools, hospitals, and other public buildings; created easel paintings and sculptures; designed posters; and made prints that were distributed widely at low cost. All of the prints in the exhibition Art for the People were either produced specifically for the Federal Art Project or date from the period when the FAP operated. Further, all of the works in the exhibition hail from the personal collection of Baltimore artist and avid print collector Scott Ponemone and his late husband, Michael Frommeyer, with many promised as future gifts. Thus, the exhibition further illustrates the important role that private collectors play in the growth of museum collections. Organized by the Academy Art Museum Image: Leo Meissner (Detroit, Michigan, 1895 – 1977, Portland, Maine), War Bulletins, Circa 1942, wood engraving in black on wove paper, edition of 32/50, 6 1/8 x 9 1/8 inches (image), 15 x 19 (framed). Collection of the Ponemone and Frommeyer Revocable Trust.