The Dickinson County Historical Society and the
Arts Council of Dickinson County in Abilene will host “Images of Depression-Era
Work in Kansas Post Office Murals,” a presentation and discussion by Lorraine
Madway on Saturday, June 8 at 7:00 pm at the Dickinson County Heritage Center
located at 412 S Campbell Street.
Members of the community are invited to attend the free program. Contact the Heritage Center at 785-263-2681 for
more information. The program is made
possible by the Kansas Humanities Council.
This program is the beginning of the Dickinson
County Historical Society’s summer Memories of the Prairie Lecture Series. Each Saturday night in June and July there
will be an historical program presented at the Heritage Center at 7 pm. The
first program is co-sponsored by the Arts Council of Dickinson County. The Arts
Council continues to help bring the arts and cultural to the residents of
Dickinson County. All of the Memories of
the Prairie Programs are free of charge; however, donations are always welcomed
to help offset the cost of the programs.
Between 1936 and 1942, the federal government’s
Fine Arts Section of the Procurement Division of the Treasury Department
partnered with Kansas citizens and professional artists and architects to
produce post office murals that portrayed the workers, landscapes, and heritage
of Kansas. Madway will discuss how the resulting depictions, heroic if not
fully accurate, of agriculture, industry and state history preserved local
autonomy while projecting the New Deal values of optimism and communal
progress.
Lorraine Madway is the special collections
curator and university archivist at Wichita State University Libraries. Her
article about the Federal Writers’ Project for Kansas was published in Kansas History: A Journal of the Central
Plains in Summer 2012.
“Along
with other art projects in the New Deal, post office murals helped to rebuild
the nation’s spirit at a time of crisis,” said Madway. “These images challenge
us to ask what we can learn from this creativity as we work to renew the spirit
of our state and nation in our own time.”
The Kansas Humanities Council conducts and
supports community-based programs, serves as a financial resource through an
active grant-making program, and encourages Kansans to engage in the civic and
cultural life of their communities. For
more information about KHC programs contact the Kansas Humanities Council at
785/357-0359 or visit online at www.kansashumanities.org.
For more information about “Images of
Depression-Era Work in Kansas Post Office Murals” in Abilene contact the Dickinson County
Historical Society at 785-263-2681.
