The first floor of the 1938 McKinley County Courthouse remains largely in its original condition, including its terrazzo flooring and tile wainscoting. While it is not known where or by whom these tiles were manufactured, it is probable that they are the output of a New Deal era vocational school or workshop. They appear to be designed and made specifically for the courthouse to complement its Southwestern architecture and the many Diné (Navajo) sandpainting-style wall paintings and Nuevomexicano tinwork light fixtures decorating its lobby. The primary pattern within the installation, seen in the arrangement of tan and blue tiles along the wide middle band, is a familiar alternating stepped-triangle design found in Diné weavings and baskets. Additionally, the motif of the second-to-top row of tiles echoes that of Ancestral Puebloan T-shaped doors (which are also used in the architecture of the courthouse in two instances).
(Note: The painted “District Attorney” sign seen in this photograph is a recent addition done in the same lettering style used in 1939 when the courthouse was opened.)
As a decorative art, tinwork has been practiced in the area that is now New Mexico for over 300 years. Originally developed by 18th-century Spanish colonists, it is a mestizaje, or hybrid, art form. As seen here, the practice combines Spanish motifs of rosettes and scallops with Indigenous designs of parrots and rainbows to create a distinctly “New Mexican” cultural expression.
New Deal art programs were broadly interested in cultivating a unique American artistic identity and in establishing the United States as an arts and cultural center with its own rich legacy and heritage separate from that of Europe. Toward that end, New Mexico’s Federal Art Project (FAP) heavily promoted Spanish Colonial art forms specific to what is now the Southwestern United States. Tinwork was developed by Spanish colonists in what is now New Mexico in the 1700s and became widely practiced after the opening of the Santa Fe Trail in 1821 and the corresponding increase in trade. The New Mexico FAP picked up the mantle of the tradition by directing the state’s workshop programs to train artists in the craft and to produce objects such as this light fixture, frames, and other decorative arts for newly constructed buildings.
The New Deal famously built a great number of public buildings. It also furnished those buildings, turning out an incredible quantity of decorative arts. In New Mexico, the Federal Art Project worked in concert with other New Deal programs and state vocational schools to set up workshops employing mostly Hispano artists to produce Spanish Colonial–style furniture and other items for newly constructed buildings across the state. This bench and an identical duplicate were created for the historic McKinley County Courthouse, which was built through the Public Works Administration in 1938.
In all likelihood, this bench was made at a 1930s State of New Mexico vocational school. During the New Deal, the state’s vocational schools and the Federal Art Project teamed up to manufacture furniture and decorative arts for newly constructed public buildings such as the 1938 McKinley County Courthouse, where this bench and an identical copy are housed. Schools operated according to a workshop model: students/artists were supplied with instructional bulletins, or production manuals, and worked individually and/or collaboratively to create pieces. Although designs were regulated, students/artists found ways to express original artistry. Unfortunately, the New Deal did not credit these students/artists—most of whom were Hispano—for their work.
New Mexico’s New Deal programs worked in concert with the State’s vocational schools to produce countless pieces of furniture and decorative arts to fill public buildings. In New Mexico, that program dovetailed with efforts to revive 18th-century Spanish Colonial traditions. The resulting proliferation of Spanish Colonial–style interior décor cemented New Mexico’s visual identity. Take this trastero (cabinet), for example. It was likely produced in a New Deal workshop employing Hispano artists to recreate Spanish Colonial furniture designs, with an emphasis on certain features and motifs such as those seen here: turned spindles, scalloped edges, rosette carvings, and visible joinery. In this way, the New Deal cultivated a visual vocabulary that has since been perceived as looking characteristically “New Mexican.”
This trastero (cabinet) is unique in terms of its design, which draws from the confluence of cultures that is New Mexico. It combines “imported,” traditional Spanish Colonial motifs such as the scalloped border and rosettes carved into the lower part of each front door panel with “local” ideas. By decorating the top half of each panel with images of corn stalks, the artist “Indigenizes” the piece—corn is a crop native to the Americas and it continues to be significant to the Indigenous peoples of what is now the Southwestern United States. Unfortunately, New Deal and associated programs generally categorized woodworkers as “craftspeople” and not artists, and did not credit the maker(s) of this hand-built, original work.
Shalako, which depicts an annual A:shiwi (Zuni) winter festival, is an action-packed, tremendously detailed painting. In it, Jose Rey Toledo captures everything from the central dancers’ movements and regalia to the backdrop with supreme precision. Notice the fine lines delineating each individual bead on the dancers’ necklaces, how headdress feathers have been colored one by one, and how the artist renders the fringe of the woven sashes worn by the two dancers on the left with pinpoint-size brushstrokes. Behind them, more than two dozen onlookers are individually represented, each with distinct facial features, clothing, and postures. Toledo’s meticulousness even extends to the background, where each element is finely articulated, including the perched owl’s feathers.
In 1939, San Francisco hosted the Golden Gate International Exposition to celebrate the opening of the San Francisco—Oakland Bay and Golden Gate Bridges and the theme of “Pacific Unity.” The Exposition included an “Indian Court” exhibit organized by the newly established Indian Arts & Crafts Board (IACB) with art displays, a vendor marketplace, artist demonstrations, and guided tours. These posters, produced by Louis Siegriest for the IACB in partnership with another New Deal program, the Federal Art Project, promote The Indian Court’s conception and representation of “eight great areas of Indian culture,” including the “Fishermen of the Northwest Coast,…Buffalo Hunters of the Plains,…the Cornplanters of the Pueblos, [and] the Navajo Shepherds”—Gallup’s collection includes only four of the eight total posters. The imagery is borrowed from Indigenous artists, who received little or no recognition. Siegriest created the poster designs but “had nothing to do with the actual process,” meaning he didn’t make the screens or pull the prints; “I would see that they got out,” he recalled. “I think they got out 1,500 of each poster.”1
In 1939, San Francisco hosted the Golden Gate International Exposition to celebrate the opening of the San Francisco—Oakland Bay and Golden Gate Bridges and the theme of “Pacific Unity.” The Exposition included an “Indian Court” exhibit organized by the newly established Indian Arts & Crafts Board (IACB) with art displays, a vendor marketplace, artist demonstrations, and guided tours. These posters, produced by Louis Siegriest for the IACB in partnership with another New Deal program, the Federal Art Project, promote The Indian Court’s conception and representation of “eight great areas of Indian culture,” including the “Fishermen of the Northwest Coast,…Buffalo Hunters of the Plains,…the Cornplanters of the Pueblos, [and] the Navajo Shepherds”—Gallup’s collection includes only four of the eight total posters. The imagery is borrowed from Indigenous artists, who received little or no recognition. Siegriest created the poster designs but “had nothing to do with the actual process,” meaning he didn’t make the screens or pull the prints; “I would see that they got out,” he recalled. “I think they got out 1,500 of each poster.”1
