After cotton prices fell sharply and the 1927 flood wreaked its destruction in the Mississippi River valley, Arkansas was weakened before the Depression really hit. How the federal government dealt with the economic crisis has been well documented for the most part, but gaps exist.

Little Rock attorney John P. Gill has filled one of those gaps by exploring how the federal government introduced public art to Arkansas. The government embarked upon a program to place art in a prominent place, the local post office, with two purposes in mind: lifting Americans’ badly depressed spirits and providing an outlet for talented but starving artists.

Gill’s efforts to document the program in Arkansas have led to the book, Post Masters: Arkansas Post Office Art in the New Deal, published by Arkansas State University in Jonesboro.

An Arkansas native, Gill’s love of history and appreciation for art merged to drive his interest in documenting a part of the state’s culture from a very historic period. His wife Marjem joined him in the research. Famed photographer Willie Allen added color photography of all the art.

"Hopefully, this book will rekindle pride in our Arkansas heritage, just as the originals did during the Great Depression," Gill writes in the book’s introduction.

Post Masters is his fourth book with an Arkansas history theme.

Through his friend Curt Bradbury of Little Rock, who wrote the foreword for Post Masters, Gill approached ASU about publishing the work. Dr. Les Wyatt, president of ASU, saw several benefits for the university.

ASU offers academic degree programs in printing management, so the book of artistic reproductions offered the ASU Printing Services professional staff and students an excellent opportunity to demonstrate their capabilities using state of the art printing equipment. This is the university’s first book publishing project.

ASU also is building a doctoral degree program in heritage studies, established partly in recognition of the need to preserve state and regional heritage.

"Preservation and exhibition of the New Deal Era art, through this volume by John P. Gill, is an example of why this doctoral program is so important," according to Dr. Wyatt. "By joining with John Gill’s journey to Arkansas post offices, Arkansas State University has continued its record of involvement with outreach programs that support artistic and culturally significant projects."

Gill, who holds degrees in history and law from Vanderbilt University, has been deeply involved with Arkansas historic preservation for years. He is president of the foundation that restored historic Curran Hall, Little Rock’s oldest brick residence; past co-chairman of the Central Arkansas Civil War Heritage Trail Committee; and a committee chairman for the Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial.

He admits, however, he knew nothing of the New Deal Era public art until the Springdale Post Office mural caught his attention during a visit to the Shiloh Museum in that city. Museum curator Bob Beeson began filling him in on the history of the art.

Quickly convinced of the significance of New Deal public art, the Gills set out to travel the state and view the pieces still in existence. Originally, the U.S. Treasury’s Section of Fine Arts commissioned 19 paintings and two bas relief sculptures to be placed in Arkansas post offices. The Clarendon mural disappeared, and the Osceola mural was destroyed in a fire, but 19 works still exist.

The artists were directed by the Section of Fine Arts to select American scenes which related to each post office’s location, either through its history, local industry, or other special aspects of the community.

After an unsuccessful effort of his own, Gill secured the assistance of Willie Allen to photograph each painting as it is now displayed. Gill said Allen’s expertise was crucial to the success of the project because the originals are large and often hung in locations which make them particularly difficult to photograph. Existing lighting and nearby objects, such as fixtures, presented many obstacles.

Locations span from Siloam Springs in the northwest corner of the state to Lake Village in the southeast corner; from Magnolia in the southwest to Piggott in the northeast.

Most of the art is either still in the local post offices, or in former post office buildings now used for other purposes. Other communities where Gill documented New Deal art were Benton, Berryville, Clarksville, Dardanelle, DeQueen, DeWitt, Monticello, Morrilton, Nashville, Paris, Siloam Springs, Van Buren and Wynne.

In his book, Gill provides a detailed description of each piece and its artistic development.

To research how the artists were selected and how the subjects were chosen, the Gills researched National Archive and Post Office records in Washington, D. C. He learned that 12,000 works were commissioned for America’s post offices.

Gill’s book explores how the art was developed under the watchful eye of the Section of Fine Arts. Correspondence and other documents provide an interesting retrospective on how the finished product was something of a compromise between the artist’s freedom of expression and the public sentiment at the time.

Two of the artists were native Arkansans. Natalie Henry painted the Springdale mural, later judged to be one of the finest in the country, while Louis Freund painted murals for Heber Springs and Pocahontas. Most of the artists came from metropolitan areas because the South had few art schools or art museums in the Depression era.

In addition to Allen’s photography, Gill credits Chuck Bostwick for book design and layout, and Dr. Marylyn Parins and Dr. Jim Parins of Little Rock for editing, and Ron Robinson for his creative involvement.

Proceeds from the sale of the book will be used to restore the Louis Freund’s artwork that once hung in the Pocahontas Post Office and now is on loan to the Bradbury collection at ASU.

The price of the book is $49.95, plus $5.95 for shipping and handling. To order, send a check for $55.90 to Arkansas State University Foundation, P.O. Box 1990, State University, AR 72467.

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