Thursday, October 29, 2026 · 7:00 PM – 8:15 PM
Outside Front Doors — 300 Chandler St., Tewksbury, MA
**PLEASE NOTE THIS IS A VIRTUAL PROGRAM THAT WILL TAKE PLACE VIA ZOOM. Registrants will receive a link to access the Zoom Webinar via email.** Discover one of the most ambitious cultural experiments in American history, when the federal government employed thousands of artists, photographers, and muralists to document and beautify a nation struggling through the Great Depression. The Works Progress Administration and Farm Security Administration programs transformed unemployed creative professionals into chroniclers of American resilience, producing iconic images like Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" that would define how we remember this pivotal era. Explore how government patronage shaped artistic vision, and what happened when democracy itself becomes both patron and subject of American art. By examining works by Walker Evans, Gordon Parks, Thomas Hart Benton, and scores of lesser-known artists who fanned out across the country with cameras, brushes, and chisels, appreciate how New Deal arts programs created a collective portrait of America that celebrated the dignity of ordinary people while laying the foundation for a uniquely democratic approach to supporting the arts. Led…