The Public Works of Art Project was a program to employ artists, as part of the New Deal

New Deal

The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...

, during the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

. It was the first such program, running from December 1933 to June 1934. It was headed by Edward Bruce

Edward Bruce (New Deal)

Edward Bruce was the director of the Public Works of Art Project and the Section of Painting and Sculpture, two New Deal relief efforts that provided work for artists in the United States during the Great Depression...

, under the United States Treasury Department and paid for by the Civil Works Administration

Civil Works Administration

The Civil Works Administration was established by the New Deal during the Great Depression to create manual labor jobs for millions of unemployed. The jobs were merely temporary, for the duration of the hard winter. Harry L. Hopkins was put in charge of the organization. President Franklin D...

.
The largest of the projects sponsored by the PWAP is the Coit Tower murals in San Francisco’s Coit Tower

Coit Tower

Coit Tower is a tower in the Telegraph Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, California. The tower, in the city's Pioneer Park, was built in 1933 at the request of Lillie Hitchcock Coit to beautify the city of San Francisco; Coit bequeathed one-third of her estate to the city "to be expended in an...

. This project was also largely controversial because of the strong influence of Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera

Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, an active communist, and husband of Frida Kahlo . His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in...

 in the city, and the interest of the PWAP to keep publicly sponsored art projects non-revolutionary.