Activists Fight to Salvage the “Sistine Chapel of New Deal Art”
President Trump's plans to sell a federal building housing works of art about Social Security is an attempt to erase the country’s history, a new petition argues.
A group of artists, preservationists, and activists is sounding the alarm against Trump’s potential demolition of a prominent federal office building next to the National Mall, and the treasured artworks inside it — including several New Deal-era murals that speak to the value of Social Security in the United States.
Alex Lawson, executive director of the advocacy organization Social Security Works, co-authored a petition to save the works with local muralist Absurdly Well. Released earlier this week, the missive demands that the Trump administration cease its plans to sell the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, described in the petition as the “Sistine Chapel of New Deal art.”
In an interview with Hyperallergic, Lawson called Trump’s proposed transaction “authoritarianism 101.”
“Erasing art culture and history is how authoritarians make it seem there’s nothing better than the thin gruel of cruelty they are offering,” Lawson said. “We couldn’t stop them from destroying the East Wing of the White House, but I pledge we’ll stop them from destroying the Wilbur Cohen building.”
It would have been unthinkable merely a year ago that any president would willingly erase a visible symbol of America’s national heritage.
But these are unprecedented times. After tearing down the East Wing to build a new ballroom without approvals from a national planning commission or Congress and affixing his name on the Kennedy Center, President Trump is seeking to liquidate four federal buildings by auctioning them to private developers.
One of them is the Wilbur Cohen building, a block-long office on Independence Avenue that houses the headquarters of the Social Security Administration and Voice of America’s offices. The Charles Klauder-designed Egyptian Revivalist structure has been a historically designated landmark in Washington, DC, since 1978 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places nearly two decades ago.
The building interiors, which feature works by Ben Shahn, Philip Guston, Seymour Fogel, and Ethel and Jenne Magafan, are also landmarked and arguably even more significant.
The most famous of them is Shahn’s stark yet emotional fresco-secco “The Meaning of Social Security” (1942), depicting how the federal financial safety net lifted American families out of the poverty they endured during the Great Depression. Shahn once called the fresco, which he painted on dry plaster, “the best work I’ve done.”
Fogel’s works “Security of the People” (1942) and “Wealth of the Nation” (1942) show Americans raising their families and working in scientific labs and factories to build an equitable society in the 20th century.
Preservationist Judy Chesser, head of the nonprofit land use and planning group Committee of 100 on the Federal City, said the works symbolized the importance of the American worker through history and would be “very difficult and expensive to remove.”
“The art and architecture of these endangered properties manifest the good that happens when the government puts the American worker first, as it did when these were conceived in the Works Progress Administration,” Chesser said in a statement to Hyperallergic.
That hasn’t stopped President Trump from razing historically prominent artworks. In 1979, the Trump Organization executive purchased the Bonwit Teller building on 5th Avenue and 56th Street for $15 million and promised to donate two limestone Art Deco friezes to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, workers destroyed the panels while demolishing the building to make way for Trump Tower. Trump reportedly told the press at the time that the art had no intrinsic value.
When the White House published a list of hundreds of federal properties across the country it sought to close down or potentially sell two months into Trump’s tenure, few in Washington took the downsizing seriously until bulldozers began dismantling the East Wing in October.
Now Trump’s plan is clear. The General Services Administration (GSA), which owns and operates most of the nation’s federal office buildings, listed the Wilbur Cohen property as an asset for accelerated disposition last year for the purpose of selling it off to a private owner. The building has more than 1 million square feet of rentable office space, but a developer would more likely prefer to tear it down and build their own project, preservationists said.
That revelation sparked fear among activists who have been mobilizing to defend the landmark. Lawson has been reaching out to his email list of 4 million Social Security recipients, whom he said overwhelmingly oppose such a move, while artists and preservationists, including FDR’s grandson Jim Roosevelt, have signed a letter to save the building.
The GSA’s move even drew attention from Congress. Maine Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree, co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional Arts Caucus, vowed to “fight this reckless plan and to protect our cultural institutions from this inconsiderate and destructive Administration.”
“The building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, and its art belong to the American people and represent a unique era when our government recognized the importance of investing in public art and memorializing landmark legislative accomplishments like the Social Security Act,” Pingress said in a statement to Hyperallergic. “Demolition would be a devastating and irreversible loss.”
Artist Absurdly Well, who co-authored the recent petition, said the Trump administration was seeking to erase the country’s memory and history as it seeks to dismantle the anti-poverty systems Americans have relied on for generations.
“Artists everywhere should be enraged by this. That rage needs to go back into studios, apartments, and then back into the streets. We need art in public space that says: You do not get to erase this narrative,” he said in a statement to Hyperallergic. “This history matters.”
