Celebrating Heroes: American Mural Studies of the 1930s and 1940s from the Steven and Susan Hirsch Collection

About the publication

The 1930s and 1940s were a golden age for murals in America where the everyday worker rose to the status of a primary hero. The Great Depression forged a renewed belief in the centrality of the laborer, and the federal government sponsored numerous work programs, including those for visual artists. Wall paintings about larger-than-life miners, farmers, and others covered walls in public buildings across the country. Preliminary ideas played out in sketches, however, and almost fifty of these are displayed in this exhibition, which honors gifts donated by Susan and Steven Hirsch, class of 1971. The exhibition is supported by the Evelyn Metzger Exhibition Fund.

This collection catalogue accompanies the exhibition Celebrating Heroes: American Mural Studies of the 1930s and 1940s from the Steven and Susan Hirsch Collection on display at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, from September 2 to December 18, 2016. Curator Patricia Phagan is the author of the catalogue, which also features a foreword by James Mundy and a preface by Steven R. Hirsch.