Lauren Arrington | BOHEMIANS ON THE BREADLINE

Join us for a conversation with Lauren Arrington as she discusses her newest release, BOHEMIANS ON THE BREADLINE interviewed by Keri Watson.
About this Event

About the book:

The extraordinary and unexamined history of a radical group of women artists funded by Roosevelt's New Deal, who challenged racism and inequality and created enduring works of public art.

• Arrington focuses mainly on the artists Alice Neel, Augusta Savage, Georgette Seabrook, Lenore Thomas Straus, Pablita Velarde, and Elizabeth Olds. They are white, Black, queer, and in some cases openly communist. Neel has had a huge public resurgence in recent years--with a big Met retrospective--and Savage has also been rediscovered. But otherwise, these women and their work have been neglected for decades.
• Under Roosevelt's Works Project Administration, part of the New Deal, artists were employed to make public art. Arrington spins a fascinating tale of radical artists who suddenly found themselves being paid by the government to make art that expressed their anti-fascist, anti-racist, and often proletarian views.
• Arrington was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholars Award and the Robert & Ina Caro Award from Biographers International Organization. She was also a visiting fellow at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library--a highly competitive post--where she conducted a lot of her research. Quotes from her NEH grant committee are included here, and we hope for continued support from the NYPL.
• There are 35 b&w photos throughout the text that portray the artists at work, as well as group shots of some of the artists, including the influential Harlem Artists Guild, which served as an important community group. There will also be two 8-page color inserts that will feature the work of the main artists discussed.
• The story centers mostly on Manhattan, both the Downtown and the Harlem arts scenes in the 1930s, but it also travels to Washington D.C., Maryland, and New Mexico, to give a wide-ranging look at the artists working under Roosevelt's New Deal.