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CETA Arts Legacy Project
The CETA Arts Legacy Project began as a small group of artists who had been part of the Cultural Council Foundation CETA Artists Project in NYC.
In retrospect, we recognized the importance of CETA as a model for government support of artist employment and for community service.
We also saw knowledge of the CETA Arts programs slipping from history.
From 2011 to 2019 we focused primarily on researching and gathering documentation for the CCF Project and getting word out to the public
through a website, scholarly presentations and articles. Through our research we gained a greater appreciation of the national scope of
CETA’s support of artist employment. By 2020, with the added impetus of the great damage done to the cultural economy by the
Coronavirus pandemic, we expanded our efforts to a national scope and have now assembled a broad coalition.
In 2017, CETA Arts legacy efforts gained a partner in NYC’s City Lore/Place Matters initiative, which has lent staff, space and other
resources in support of the project and has acted as a kind of institutional home. City Lore’s archivist, Molly Garfinkel,
has been its primary liaison to the legacy project.
List of Legacy Project Participants and Advisors
Because WPA was a centralized program, detailed records are available . . . But because CETA was decentralized no such records exist.
Thus, the quality and quantity of the accomplishments of the program could be lost.
— Congressman Jack Brooks (D-TX), Chair of Congressional Committee on Operations, November 15, 1983
The Alvin Ailey Dance Company and the South Side Community Art Center in Chicago, where Gwendolyn Brooks taught, received CETA funding.
CETA-related Exhibitions
New York Public Library - In July 2025, the Wallach Division's photography collection acquired 100 vintage prints
of photographs
of the CCF CETA Artists Project made in 1978 by two members of its
Documentation Unit, George Malave and Blaise Tobia.
ART/WORK How the Government-Funded CETA Jobs Program Put Artists to Work 1973-1981
City Lore and Cuchiritos Galleries NYC (December 2021 - April 2022)
MOMA Exhibition "Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces" (through February 18, 2023)
features works by fifteen artists who worked under CETA
(seven in the NYC CCF project)
CETA-related Media Appearances (selected)
"The CETA Arts Revolution" Part 1 • Part 2 - a two-part podcast on Change the Story/Change the World (05/25)
in conversation with Bill Cleveland, Director of the Center for Study of Art and Community
The Forgotten Federally Employed Artists - article: Hyperallergic (12/20)
The landmark 70s artist program that shaped American culture forever - article: i-D (01/22)
Artists say a forgotten Nixon-era jobs program could radically alter federal arts funding - article: Philadelphia Inquirer (4/21)
Panels and Presentations (selected)
"Forgotten Federal Art Legacies: The New Deal to CETA in San Francisco"
A convening organized by The Living New Deal
at the California College for the Arts, San Francisco, March 2025
Program
"Art History in Search of a Historian"
Andrea Kirsh • Virginia Maksymowicz • Blaise Tobia
at the College Art Association conference in NYC, February 2023
"Critical Lens: Art x CETA"
Ellin Burke • Kenneth R. Cobb • Molly Garfinkel (chair) • Virginia Maksymowicz • George Malave • Blaise Tobia • Judd Tully
at the NYC Department of Records and Information Services, Municipal Archives , October 2022
Video via YouTube
"How an Almost-Forgotten Federal Program Kickstarted the Feminist Art Movement"
Virginia Maksymowicz (chair) • Jerri Allyn • Arlene Rakoncay • Senga Nengudi •Maren Hassinger • Ann Kalmbach • Nina Kuo
via Zoom
March 2022 (introduction by Molly Garfinkel)
Video via YouTube
"The Forgotten Federal Artists: CETA and the CCF Artists Project"
Christy Rupp • Ademola Olegbefola • Judd Tully • Blaise Tobia (chair)
at the College Art Association conference in NYC, February 2019
"Artists, Institutions and Public Funding for the Arts: the Legacy of CETA"
Tom Finkelpearl • Rochelle Slovin • Ted Berger • Steven C. Dubin • Howard Singerman (chair)
at Hunter College, February 2019
Influencing Public Policy
Partners
City Lore/Place Matters and Artists Alliance have worked with the CETA Arts Legacy Project to document the history
of CETA's support of artist employment; they produced "Art/Work" a two-venue exhibition, in 2021/22. They have received support
for their CETA Arts work from the Doris Duke Foundation,the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, the Mellon Foundation
and the National Endowment for Humanities. If you are on Facebook - see the NYC CETA Artists Project page.
Living New Deal, and specifically its New Deal Art Initiative, is sponsoring a Webinar series on CETA and the Arts during October, 2024.
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