Lloyd Moylan is the most-represented artist in Gallup’s New Deal art collection. Almost one-third of the easel paintings in the collection—nineteen in number—are made by him. He is also responsible for the collection’s most significant work: a 2,000-square-foot mural in the courtroom of the historic McKinley County Courthouse.
This exhibit is a first-of-its-kind comprehensive survey of Moylan’s career and oeuvre. It is a close examination of his creative process and artistic philosophy that writes Moylan back into the art historical record and, in so doing, complicates and expands our understanding of early 20th-century Western American art.
Lloyd Moylan was born in Minneapolis in 1893. He studied at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and at the Art Students League in New York City. A teaching position at the Broadmoor Art Academy brought him west to Colorado Springs, CO, and research trips to Taos for a mural commission inspired his move to New Mexico in the early 1930s. He had a home and studio in Alcalde, between Santa Fe and Taos.
Moylan fit seamlessly within the 20th-century European-American New Mexican artistic world that developed around the Taos and Santa Fe artist colonies, focusing on Western and Southwestern subjects popular with his fellow artists, including landscapes and scenes of Native American culture. During the New Deal, he made his mark as a muralist. Moylan rode the wave of his New Deal success through the mid-1950s, becoming a widely exhibited and popular painter before his substance abuse disorder ended his artistic career, and, eventually, his life.
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Gallup and McKinley County are situated on the ancestral and current homelands of the Diné and Ashiwi peoples.
Gallup’s New Deal art collection consists of over 120 objects created, purchased, or donated from 1933 to 1942 through New Deal federal art programs administered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to support artists during the Great Depression.
The Gallup New Deal Art Virtual Museum features three types of exhibits, combining traditional and non-traditional approaches to illuminate academic, creative, and individual understandings.
Gallup’s New Deal art collection includes works by a demographically, professionally, and stylistically diverse group of named and unnamed artists.
Image Use Notice: Images of Gallup’s New Deal artworks are available to be used for educational purposes only. Non-collection images are subject to specific restrictions and identified by a © icon. Hover over the icon for copyright info. Read more
