Daniel Rhodes - Works Progress Administration

Works Progress Administration

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was established by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 as a means of providing income for unemployed Americans during the Depression. A branch of the WPA, known as the Federal Arts Project (FAP), gave jobs to visual artists, including Daniel Rhodes.

He received three WPA commissions: In 1937, he was hired by the WPA to paint a mural titled Storm Lake for the post office at Storm Lake, Iowa. Later, when a new post office was built, the mural was relocated to the public library.

In the same year, Rhodes and another Iowa painter named Howard C. Johnson were commissioned to create a large mural (110 feet wide by 10 feet (3.0 m) high), planned for installation in the Agricultural Building at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines. Titled Where tillage begins, other arts follow, the project was a commemoration of Iowa agriculture: planting, harvesting, production, and the meat packing industry. Unfortunately, it soon became the subject of a public derision. Opinionated passersby complained about factual inaccuracies in the mural, claimed that the figures of Iowans were too solemn, and objected to what they considered to be a style that was “too modern.” In 1946, Iowa State Fair Board Secretary Lloyd Cunningham ordered that the mural be taken down and that the dismantled pieces be used as scrap lumber. Apparently, all that now survives of the mural are a few photographs.

Rhodes’ third WPA project was a mural for the U.S. Post Office at Marion, Iowa, titled Communication by Mail. In 1939, Rhodes painted this mural in the time-honored technique of fresco-secco. Rhodes painted the mural directly onto the Post Office's lobby wall. It features the role of the railroad in transporting mail. The Post Office was decommissioned and sold to the city of Marion in 1968. The city used the building as the City Hall until 2005. The building sat empty for a year before being bought by a bank. In June 2008, Anton Rajer a professional fine art conservator from Green Bay, WI will begin work to move the mural to the Marion Heritage Center. The mural is estimated to weigh approximately 2,000 - 3,000 pounds, and will be removed from the building in one piece by a team of contractors.

His success in completing these projects led to Rhodes being commissioned for WPA projects in other states, including post office murals at Clayton, Missouri (now at the Federal Building in Des Moines), and Glen Ellyn, Illinois; and a cafeteria mural in the main U.S. Navy building in Washington, D.C.