Harlem Hospital Restores Historic WPA Murals

April 24, 2008

This video highlights the effort now being undertaken by Harlem Hospital Center to restore and preserve murals that were commissioned in 1936 by the Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal agency, the federal Works Progress Administration (WPA). These were the first major U.S.-government commissions awarded to African American artists and therefore sparked great public controversy at the time. Unfortunately, like many WPA projects, they fell into relative obscurity during intervening decades when New York City government had limited resources to maintain such art works. Now, as Harlem Hospital Center builds a new state-of-the-art medical building to extend its mission of patient care, it is also engaged in the complex process of preserving, restoring and placing the historic murals in a permanent position of architectural prominence. Columbia University Web developers have worked with Harlem Hospital Center, the only public hospital affiliate of Columbia University Medical Center, to document the remarkable history of the WPA murals and the extensive efforts now underway to restore and maintain these works for posterity. (3:53)

 

To learn more about this important part of Harlem and African American cultural history go to the Harlem Hospital WPA Murals Web site.