View this email in your browser ([link removed])

MAY / JUNE 2025


** The Darkening Age ([link removed])
------------------------------------------------------------

When asked if the Great Depression had historical precedent, economist John Maynard Keynes replied, “Yes, it was called the Dark Ages, and it lasted four hundred years.”

That assessment may be apt today, even without a Depression, as the current administration in Washington, DC dismantles longstanding cultural, artistic, health and scientific agencies, endangering libraries, museums and universities—knowledge itself. It’s a rerun of how the achievements of the classical world were largely lost during the last Dark Age ([link removed].) , through banning pagan education and cultural practices and destroying classical art and artifacts. In our own darkening times, the Living New Deal has not been spared. Like hundreds of other NEH grantees across the country, our grant from the recently ransacked National Endowment for the Humanities has been canceled.

Now, more than ever, we must redouble our efforts to recover and illuminate the physical, social and ethical achievements of the New Deal, reminding ourselves of what our nation once had, and that such a world is still possible. We are grateful for your support.

—Gray Brechin, Founder and Project Scholar, The Living New Deal


** A Digital Portal to the Past ([link removed])
------------------------------------------------------------


** By Rose Eason
------------------------------------------------------------
During the New Deal, Gallup was one of four New Mexico communities to sponsor a Federal Arts Center, an initiative of the WPA Federal Art Project. Its legacy is an impressive collection of 120 paintings, prints, murals, decorative arts and architecture reflecting the region’s Native American, Hispano and Anglo cultures. gallupARTS—the nonprofit arts council serving Gallup and McKinley County—undertook an 8-year effort to research, develop and build the Gallup New Deal Art Virtual Museum, which launched in March. READ MORE ([link removed])


** The Art of Democracy ([link removed])
------------------------------------------------------------


** By Sara Woodbury
------------------------------------------------------------
One of the few remaining Community Art Centers of the New Deal, the Roswell Museum ([link removed]) has remained a cultural beacon in southeast New Mexico for nearly 90 years. But the Museum’s legacy is threatened. A 500-year flood caused extensive damage to the building, collection and archives. READ MORE ([link removed])
HAPPENINGS
Webinar
The Living New Deal, New York Chapter
“The Next Crash?” ([link removed])
with Diana B. Henriques, Dr. Noah Rosenblum
and Kevin Baker
Tuesday, May 6, 2025, 8pm EST, 5pm PST
A series of Supreme Court decisions in the summer of 2024 jeopardized the federal government’s ability to administer almost everything. These included the Security and Exchange Commission’s regulation of America’s financial markets, one of the most hard won and enduring of the New Deal’s reforms. Diana B. Henriques is a distinguished financial journalist and author of The New Deal and FDR’s Fight to Regulate American Capitalism. Her most recent book, Taming the Street: The Old Guard, was a nominee for the Living New Deal Book Award in 2023. Noah A. Rosenblum is an associate professor of law at New York University. He has written extensively on the presidency, administrative law, constitutional law and legal history. Kevin Baker is a historian, journalist and novelist and the director of the New York City Chapter of the Living New Deal. FREE. REGISTER ([link removed])

Exhibition
Kingsborough Art Museum, Brooklyn, New York
"NEW DEAL AMERICA" Photographs by Arthur Rothstein ([link removed])
Through Wednesday, May 21, 2025
As young government photographer for the Farm Security Administration, Rothstein ([link removed]) documented President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal initiatives, aimed at bringing about relief, recovery and reform during the Great Depression. This exhibition was made possible through the support of the Hillman Foundation, Arthur Rothstein Legacy Project, Gage Gallery and Roosevelt University.

LOCATION: KAM, 2001 Oriental Boulevard, Brooklyn, NY

Exhibition
Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado
The Life and Art of Tokio Ueyama ([link removed])
Through June 1, 2025
A retrospective of Ueyama’s work includes more than 40 paintings, the majority completed during the artist’s internment at the Amache War Relocation Camp. The works speak to the daily life in the camp and how creativity can still thrive in the face of hardship, prejudice and injustice.

LOCATION: 100 14th Ave. Pkwy. Denver, CO

FDR Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, NY
Roosevelt Summer Reading Festival, New Deal Book Award ([link removed])
Saturday, June 21, 2025
Author James Shapiro will receive the Living New Deal's 2024 New Deal Book Award for The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War. The book offers a resonant history of the Federal Theater Project, a Depression-era program that gave work to writers and actors until politics took center stage. The award committee noted, "Shapiro deftly uses five Federal Theater Project productions as case studies to explore the political and cultural tensions involved with the federal government funding theater, a project many on the right deemed leftist propaganda. Shapiro has achieved an ideal balance of scholarly rigor and approachability.” FREE.

LOCATION: 4079 Albany Post Rd, Hyde Park, NY
NEW DEALISH


** FDR takes on Tammany Hall ([link removed])
------------------------------------------------------------


** By Kevin Baker
------------------------------------------------------------
New York Governor Kathy Hochul has been understandably reluctant to replace a rakish high official elected by the people. A previous governor, Franklin Roosevelt, faced the same dilemma in 1932—a decision made all the more fraught in that it could have derailed his first run for the presidency. READ MORE ([link removed])

THE NEW DEAL IN THE NEWS
Some links may limit access for nonsubscribers. Please support local journalism, if you can.

Bay Area Groups Reel From Cuts to the National Endowment of the Humanities ([link removed])
Bay Area arts and cultural groups are reeling after the Trump administration’s revocation of federal NEH grants. Living New Deal Assistant Director Mary Okin recalled getting the email with a cancellation notice for the nonprofit’s $150,000 grant.
By Sara Hossaini
KQED FM, April 16, 2015

80 years after President Franklin Roosevelt’s death,Trump cuts threaten his legacy ([link removed])
Descendants of FDR and others reflect on the unfinished business of the New Deal as the Trump administration slashes the government.
NPR, April 15, 2025

Democrats need to return to being the party of FDR ([link removed])
Democrats’ path forward is to champion unifying programs that benefit all Americans and use them to stabilize our country.
By Phil Steck
Albany Times Union, April 14, 2025
The perils of jettisoning the world FDR created ([link removed])
President Franklin D. Roosevelt helped shepherd a system into existence which aimed to combat similar pernicious forces buffeting the world in 2025: The belief that might makes right; massive economic inequality; restrictive trade policies that set former friends and allies against one another and authoritarian regimes preying on their neighbors.
By David B. Woolner
Time, April 12, 2025

Trump Will Use Culture Grant Funds to Build “American Heroes” Park ([link removed] )
Money from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which just terminated hundreds of grants for nonprofit organizations, will help build the bizarre sculpture garden, slated to honor figures from Julia Child to Justice Scalia.
By Valentina Di Liscia and Maya Pontone
Hyperallergic, April 10, 2025

These DOGE Cuts Will Cost the American People Something Precious ([link removed])
Through the work of the state humanities councils, the NEH is doing exactly what Republicans wanted it to do—give federal money back to the states. The savings achieved by the cutbacks amounts to a rounding error in the context of the federal budget.
By Margaret Renkl
The New York Times, April 7, 2025

What FDR built, Trump Wants to Tear Down ([link removed])
Interview with Historian Eric Rauchway, author of "Why the New Deal Matters"
Roosevelt was citing laws that allowed him to do what he did, which we don’t see a lot of in the current presidency.
Zachary B. Wolf
CNN, April 5, 2025

Library Advocates Rally as Trump Targets Federal Funding ([link removed])
The Institute of Museum and Library Services, created in 1996, is the federal government’s main source of support for the nation’s libraries, museums and archives. An executive order has demanded it be eliminated.
By Jennifer Schluessler
The New York Times, March 24, 2025

Trump administration slashes division in charge of 26,000 U.S. artworks ([link removed])
With the dismissal of most workers in the General Services Administration’s fine arts and preservation units, the fate of the GSA's holdings is uncertain.
By Kriston Capps, Ben Brasch and Samantha Chery
Washington Post, March 11, 2025
FDR SAYS
"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."

— Franklin D. Roosevelt, Message to Congress
April 29, 1938


YOUR DONATIONS ([link removed]) KEEP THE NEW DEAL SPIRIT ALIVE.
The Living New Deal thanks you for your generous support!
DONATE ([link removed])
JOIN US ([link removed])
FORWARD ([link removed])
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
mailto:[email protected]

============================================================
You are receiving this email because you are a friend of THE LIVING NEW DEAL.

Editor, ** Susan Ives (mailto:[email protected])

Production: ** Sheera Bleckman ([link removed])

Our mailing address is:
The Living New Deal
P.O. Box 2148
Berkeley, CA 94702-0148

** [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])

** livingnewdeal.org ([link removed])

If you no longer wish to receive these emails, ** click here ([link removed])
to unsubscribe.

Copyright © 2025 LIVING NEW DEAL, All rights reserved.