Defenbacher, D. S., 1906-1986
Size: 46 Pages, Transcript
Format: Originally recorded on 2 sound tape reels. Reformatted in 2010 as 3 digital wav file. Duration is 3 hr., 7 min.
Summary: An interview of Daniel S. Defenbacher conducted by Mary McChesney on 1965 April 16 for the Archives of American Art.
Daniel S. Defenbacher (1906-1986) was an arts administrator in California.
This interview conducted as part of the Archives of American Art's New Deal and the Arts project, which includes over 400 interviews of artists, administrators, historians, and others involved with the federal government's art programs and the activities of the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s and early 1940s.
English .
The following oral history transcript is the result of a recorded interview with D. S. (Daniel S.) Defenbacher on April 16, 1965. The interview took place in Redwood City, California, and was conducted by Mary Fuller McChesney for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This interview is part of the Archives of American Art's New Deal and the Arts project.
The original transcript was edited. In 2022 the Archives created a more verbatim transcript. Additional information from the original transcript that seemed relevant was added in brackets and given an –Ed. attribution. This transcript has been lightly edited for readability by the Archives of American Art. The reader should bear in mind that they are reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: You'll have to watch the volume, my voice carries [inaudible] extremely good speaking voice for resonance, and I've done a lot of television and radio work. So, you'll find that my voice probably picks up any depth [ph].
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: The wings are meeting them.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Can you—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: —I turned it down.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Oh, you have a visual—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: —that little greening [ph].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: That little—that little gizmo, right.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: This is Mary McChesney interviewing Daniel Defenbacher in Redwood City, and the date is April 16, 1965. I think we'll begin the interview by asking you where were you born?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Dover, Ohio, which is a little town in southern—southeastern Ohio, in 1906. And you want me to just go on and kind of cover that early period?
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Well, especially about your art training.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Especially about the art training.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Well, my art training didn't begin until I went to Carnegie Tech in 1927 after preparatory school and several military academies and a year in liberal arts at the University of Indiana. And then three years, I think, in which I stayed out of college largely because I didn't know what I wanted to do. Finally went to Carnegie Tech and took architecture and painting and sculpture. Graduated in '31 with a fellowship for a master's degree and went back for one year to complete the master's degree, which I did not actually complete, but spent the year at it anyway.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Or most of it. During that period, I became considerably interested in painting and had my first one man show at a little gallery—the name of which I can't remember at the moment—in downtown Pittsburgh. And then had a number of other shows. At that time, painting in the traditional watercolor style of the period—watercolor sketch kind of thing, facile, very acceptable, but not worth a damn. And then, then I went to work—really what kept me from finishing the master's degree was I was offered a job as chief designer of a—of a store fixture company in Charlotte, North Carolina and spent about two years, I believe, designing store fixtures. You have to remember that this was the Depression years—these were the Depression years and things were pretty rough.
But during that period, I formed a corporation or a partnership, really with a man named Gaines in Asheville, North Carolina, who was an architect. And opened an office in Chapel Hill, North Carolina—an architectural office. Chapel Hill, North Carolina. And this now—was now about 1934 and WPA was just about to break. And I—the architecture business was very slow, so I started teaching watercolor, [coughs] and then doing watercolors, lots of times on commission. Paul Green, the playwright, for instance, commissioned me to travel around North Carolina and South Carolina and make watercolors of old plantation buildings and houses. For a library which apparently Paul still has, I don't know where this thing is. I don't know where they—I don't have any of the sketches or things anymore. But he paid well, and it was a charming association because Paul was very inventive. You probably don't know who this man is, Paul Green.
[00:05:17]
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: He wrote—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: [Inaudible] body down and what's the—oh, what—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Famous poet, isn't he?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: I thought body down [This Body This Earth –Ed.] was one. What was the other famous one? Oh, boy. But the thing I remember him most for was that he wrote the pageant—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Green Pastures?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Something like that, yeah.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Not Green Pastures, but something like that.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Something like that, yeah. Quite famous. Got a [Pulitzer Prize –Ed.].
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: —was made a movie.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: A movie was made of it. Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Things—and what the devil was the name of it? [In Abraham's Bosom –Ed.] But then he did the entire script for that famous pageant on the coast where the first landing of—before Plymouth Rock on the Carolina coast.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Oh. Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: It was his famous two- or three-day pageant. It's in the form of a play, but all the natives take part in it. It takes place every year. [The Lost Colony –Ed.]
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Oh, I think the play was called Pastures of Heaven, wasn't it? Is that it?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: It may have been.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Or Green Pastures?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Something—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Oh, well.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Anyway. Well, this is kind of incidental to the WPA story, except that it was part of what kind of got me interested in the whole—well, in the art situation of the time. And I think the association with Paul was probably a—in its way, enlightening. Then, I ran across Elizabeth Gilmore. Her father was the president of the University of North Carolina. Affectionately called by most people, Papa Gilmore. Elizabeth was interested in—at that time, she was a woman oh, about 30, I suppose—she was interested in the arts. I think—I don't recall now how professionally she was associated with the arts. I seem to recall that she was in sociology, but somewhat of an art historian. And they were looking for—then the WPA Project broke, and they were looking for someone to serve as North Carolina state director, and somehow or other, I got appointed. I was it. So—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: —through this woman, Mrs. Gilmore?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: She was instrumental in making the appointment. Recommended me to Eddie Cahill or something of this kind.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: How are those appointments actually made? Did you go to Washington for an interview, when you were proposed?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: No, it moved to fast for that. No. Generally, the appointments, initially, were made at the state level. Names were suggested in the state and a little biography sent in or something of this kind and an appointment was made. That was generally the way. Gradually that did change, and state directors were changed, as we developed the project, and found a need for people. Wherever we could, we did this. In many of the states—and let's face it—in many of the states—the state's rights—the political control just couldn't be broken through by Washington. This was just a fact of life.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: And we had to live with it. So, in many of the states, the Art Project, all of the art projects—the Writers' Project, the Music Project, the Federal Art Project, the Theater Project, thrived or starved depending upon the attitude of the state administrator and the political situation within the state.
[00:10:05]
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: This is bound to be true of any [government project –Ed.].
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Oh, yes. When you say you were state director of Northern California—or North Carolina, would this mean of all Projects, or just the Art Project?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Of all the Projects.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Oh. Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Of all the Projects. Well, the state of North Carolina was—had very few artists. They had a lot of, you know, miniature painters and old ladies painting little scenes and this sort of thing, but very few artists in the sense that you thought of artists in New York or Chicago or in the urban centers. So, the art production and the creativity was at a very low ebb in all of southern states, as a matter of fact.
I recall spending a great deal of time discussing with Elizabeth Gilmore and with other people what in the devil should we do in a state like North Carolina, to use this federal money effectively. And we decided that the big thing would be to try to get something educational going, and it would take too long, and I don't know that my memory would be accurate. But what evolved from this was the concept of starting a small community art center, and the name came very quickly and simply: Community Art Center. Because that's exactly what we wanted to build. In this way, we could utilize such talents we had in the state to reach the largest number of people. Gradually, then, there evolved the idea that these art centers could ultimately become permanent if we set them up in such a way that they had roots in the community. And I believe, probably one of the most important contributions that I made to the whole thing—lots of people involved in developing this idea, obviously—was that we should actually make each community raise the money to provide that 25 percent that was supposed to be supplied by the state in order to get federal aid. This was an overall WPA kind of rule, you see, that in all projects approved by the WPA, the state or the community or the locality had to in some way contribute or pay 25 percent of the bill and WPA federal—the federal WPA would pay 75 percent. That was the formula.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Well in most instances, leaf-raking projects, construction projects, all those sorts of things, the local government in one way or another put up the money and then the federal government put up the rest of it. But I initiated the idea in these art centers—and it was very difficult to initiate in the beginning, because even national WPA—the national didn't want to do it this way. But I initiated the idea that the community should form together as a group and actually raise money by subscriptions or memberships or contributions from people in the community to form an art center group, and only if they did this would we then approve an art center project.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: What was the objections to this idea?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: It put the WPA kind of in a—they thought it was putting the WPA in the business of raising money.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Oh, I see. Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: And so, I had to do all sorts of things to see to it that it was very clear that a WPA project was not written until the community had raised the amount of money required.
[00:15:00]
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: I was wondering if they had thought that in some communities it might have been too much of a burden on the community itself to raise the 25 percent at that time?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: No, because the amount of money was not—it was never very tremendous. And there were many people in the community who were civic minded with money enough to do this. This wasn't in any way hitting the people who needed help and relief, at all.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: What town was it you were in in North Carolina?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: I was in Chapel Hill at the time. And the very first art center was started at—I can't remember now, either Greensboro or Raleigh, and I believe it was at Raleigh, which is the state capitol of North Carolina. The first one was started there and that would have been late in 1935, because WPA did start in 1935, didn't it? I think. Yeah.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: And you were in charge of setting up this first community art center in—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: The first one.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Very quickly after that I set one up at Greensboro and one at Winston-Salem, within a matter of, oh, five or six months. And then almost immediately was asked to next be the regional director for the southeastern states. And for a period of about six months, I was regional director and then next step was getting some art centers started at—in Florida, at Jacksonville, Miami, St. Petersburg, Key West, and then later Tallahassee.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: How would you decide which communities you thought would be a place where an art center might go over?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Usually, the first inkling would come through the state director of the Art Project, who by this time had become informed about the art center program and— through conferences and meetings in Washington, most of them were called in periodically—went back to their states and looked around to find out where one was likely, and then they'd decide that one could be built, possibly in Mobile, Alabama and would Defenbacher please come down and let's see what we can work up.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: So, I usually would go into the community with the state director then, hold meetings with local people, and get them organized and maybe go back five or six times to help them get their group organized and generally—actually incorporated under their state laws, so that they had a formal group.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Oh. Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: With officers and a bank account and the whole bit. And then when they had fulfilled their part of this 25/75 percent bargain, we would then write a project and I would approve it and that usually entailed sending a director in from the outside. I liked to send a director in from the outside rather than appoint a director inside the state, if the state administrator would allow me to, because the man coming in from the outside was free of local politics and local entanglements and could generally do a much better job. The quality of the work was just much greater.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: This didn't—wasn't always true. In some instances, a local person was made the director of the project. By and large though, across the country, people were eager to have new talent come in. They were eager to learn more about the arts.
[00:20:15]
Because in most of these—this was the backwoods, you know, and most of these places—art was at a very, very low, misunderstood level. So, they were eager, and it was not—usually not very difficult. Not only to send in someone to direct the art center program, but to send in what you would call resident artists for a month or six weeks or even six months at a time. Then shortly after the Florida group got started, Eddie asked me to come up to Washington as assistant national director and take over the job of getting these art centers started all over the country.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Eddie is Holger Cahill?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Holger Cahill. His nickname among all—everybody was Eddie. Not Holger. So, I'll just automatically use Eddie instead of Holger all the way through it because that's the only thing I ever called him by.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Okay [laughs]. Do you remember what year that was when you first went to Washington?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: 1936.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: '36. Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Yes, I was only down—it couldn't have been more than six months, in North Carolina and in southern region before the whole thing blossomed and I began to see that this was the kind of a program that should be a major effort of the Project, nationwide. Because you see with the community art center program, we were able to establish worthwhile projects in areas where you couldn't hire an artist. There weren't any to hire. Areas like Butte, Montana, where we started a fascinating little art center. I sent almost the entire staff up from Los Angeles to Butte, Montana.
Now Butte, Montana, at that time was the—you know, the copper mining owned—really a company town, owned jointly by the Anaconda Copper Company and the union, the Miner's Union. Nothing could move in that town unless it had the sanction of the leaders of the two, the manager of the Anaconda Works, and then the manager of the union or whatever they called them, the union boss. And it was—Butte was—you can't imagine how impoverished. And we went in there and I held meetings in the mayor's office, and we got the union people interested, and we got the few people with any money at all in the community interested, and we raised the required amount of money, and we got the school board to donate space in one of the empty school buildings and put up a very respectable, small art center. Very effective program.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: At that time there was no adult education program in most of the states, through the school, so this really—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Adult education was in its real infancy.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. So, you probably had a lot of adults who were very interested in the art centers, as well as younger people.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Oh, I should say.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: The art centers were attended as much—more so, perhaps, by adults than by children. In fact, our program was more—was aimed at adult participation. Young adult participation, at least.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: We tried to put the art center programs on a fairly professional level as much as we could. There were children's classes, of course, in all of them. How could you do anything else? But I believe by and large, the real focus of our decision-making was at the adult education level.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Was there any conscious effort to involve young artists who would, because of lack of money, not be able to go to art schools in the art center programs?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Oh, I should say. To bring them in as assistants in any way we could, to—if they could qualify for relief. To employ them, we always could—we never, I don't believe at any time. were in a position of having to turn down anyone.
[00:25:07]
We could always—we always had a spot for someone if they had any kind of reasonable ability. We put them to teaching, we could have them an exhibition preparators, as assistants in managing and running the art center. Each art center had a continuous exhibition program, and we ran in Washington, partly in connection with the Smithsonian Institute, an exhibition service primarily designed to feed the art centers with exhibition material around the United States. But each art center was also encouraged to—not encouraged but expected to develop its own exhibition program as much as possible from material from the locality, but also to borrow material from other states and from other regions and to put on, to the best of their ability, quite educational and effective exhibitions covering the history of the arts. The great emphasis, of course, was always, in all the exhibition programs, was on the contemporary arts. And not only of painting and sculpture, but of all of the crafts and the related arts: theater, writing, music. These art centers held activities in all of those fields, where their facilities and their staff permitted that they do so.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: After you became regional director, you were then—not regional director, but you became national director.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Assistant national director.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Assistant national director, and you were in charge then of the community art programs all over the United States.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: All over the United States.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Do you remember what areas you went into first. You'd been into sort of the South and southeastern part of the United States.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Yeah. Following the southeastern development—and I couldn't tell you why, we jumped to the—almost to the West Coast. And I believe the next art center was started in Spokane, Washington. It's hardly the coast—it's kind of inland from the coast, but when you're sitting on the East Coast, Spokane, Washington is pretty far away [laughs], you know? And I—by this time, we had formalized this recruitment program in the East. Recruiting personnel who would be willing to go these outlying places and run these art centers. And Carl Morris and Hilda Deutsch were sent to Spokane. At that time, they weren't married, and I don't know whether they even knew each other, but the two of them ended up at Spokane. And they developed, I think, one of the outstanding art center programs, and right at this moment I don't know whether that program is still going or not. I haven't been to Spokane, Washington in 20 years. And I don't know anybody in Spokane anymore. Somewhere, in some sort of document, I would have the names—I would be bound to have the names of 40 or 50 people in Spokane who would be interested. Well, I do know—I do remember someone. John Cowles— now of all the Colwes publications, the Minneapolis papers, Look magazine, so forth and so on—at that time was still in Spokane because that was the home newspaper of the Cowles Family.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: And they were very helpful in the development in Spokane center. There are other names that may come to me as we get deeper into it.
[00:30:01]
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: When you picked directors like people to send to Spokane, both of these people at that time were artists?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: They were artists.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. They didn't have to be relief people, did they?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Not necessarily. No. No, they didn't. They were on a non-relief status. They had to [inaudible], that's right. Some of them were, but—were put on a supervisory level, but it wasn't essential.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Were they mainly artists that you selected to go out and do the various—set up art centers, or did you look for other kinds of people, as well?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Mostly artists. Although I didn't rule out art historians or the art historian type of person. Several of them who were sent out would be called as art historians, you might think of them more as art administrator. But 90 percent of them were primarily producing artists.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: How would you prepare them to go out into the community and begin something like that? Did you have briefing programs—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: We had briefing programs with them, and then generally, I took them and spent a good deal of time with them right in the community, getting them acquainted with the community, helping them to get their program established. So that in each of these communities, I personally became pretty well—pretty heavily involved. And, as I say, it's a shame I don't have those records because they would be a source of quite interesting list of names of people that it would tend to bring back a good deal of many memories.
Following Spokane, we started one at Butte, Montana. And I can't remember how that came about. It could have been that someone in Butte, Montana heard about this and just wrote a letter. Could have been something like that. But anyway, Butte thing got started and I remember going in there—was a very charming and intelligent woman. The wife of one of the executives of the Anaconda Copper Company who was kind of the—what—the liaison in the company—in the community; the wheel around which this was developed. But there were practically no artists there, and so I had to send people in. And I'm trying now to remember this very colorful character from Los Angeles that I sent up there, who turned out to be precisely the right selection. Very colorful. A showman thoroughly engrained in the Hollywood manner of that period, and everybody thought that I was nuts in sending him up there, but he was exactly right. The showmanship was exactly what was needed for those people, and it turned out marvelously. Many, many stories about that, and I can't remember his name. I want to say it was Fred White. Stan McDonald would remember that, what his name was. He swore like a trooper. Effected all sorts of mannerisms, but with it all had a very sound art sense. I—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Was a Los Angeles painter?
[00:35:00]
D. S. DEFENBACHER: I don't think he was even a painter. I never did know precisely what he did except that he ran a good art center [laughs], is all I know. I wish Stan Wright were here, he'd remember his name, or Joe Danysh would remember his name. Bruce Inverarity would remember his name, I'm sure. In following that, the—Bruce Inverarity became interested and got art centers started at Salem and Gold Beach, Oregon. After that came—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Who was Bruce Inverarity? Was he the head of the Oregon Project—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Oh, Bruce Inverarity was first head of the Washington—state of Washington Project and then was made regional director for the northwestern states, which would be Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana, I believe.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Is that spelled the way it sounds?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Bruce Inverarity. I-N-V-E-R-A-R-I-T-Y. And he was just here about two weeks ago, he and his wife, and that's where he is now, and maybe we ought to get that in on the tape. I believe the eastern group—Archives group has thoroughly interviewed Bruce because we had lunch together at the Palace and he told me about it.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Oh, really?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: But it might be covered, so why don't you just put it on tape?
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: He's now the director of the Adirondack Museum. Blue Mountain Lake, New York. Robert Bruce Inverarity.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Ah.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: He's pretty well-known guy, and a very able man, by the way.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: And he was at that time, regional director of the northwestern section—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: —the northwestern section, right. Tom and Priscilla Colt got in the act up in there around Oregon, in some way or another. Tom and Priscilla moved in on the Portland Art Museum development. Tom did a brilliant job of developing the Portland Art Museum. Probably most significant influence in making that museum what it is today, and I think that it's a pretty good museum today.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: You were saying earlier that you didn't set up an art center in Portland, but the—you did aid the—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: —gave aid to the Portland Art Museum.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: But, to my—I don't recall but I don't believe that there was ever an art center as such. Why would there be? There was a museum in Portland. A very small museum. It was—the Portland Museum was just a tiny little thing at the time, but nevertheless they did have a museum program supported partly by public funds and partly by private funds.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: So, there would be no need to set one up there. So, we just gave assistance on a project basis to the museum in that way.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Would that be mainly financial assistance, or did you aid them with people too?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: We would have to give them people. All of the assistance had to go by way of people. You could only—in the WPA, you could only justify expenditure for things or for material as a percentage of money given to people.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Oh.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: This was a principle of WPA, throughout everything.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Therefore, in most of the art centers, in order to cover the cost of the quarters, light, heat, rent—if rent had to be paid—materials, and supplies, the community funds we used for these purposes, you see, and the WPA paid all the salaries. This is the way it generally works.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: This was true of all WPA projects no matter what nature they were. I've forgotten precisely what those percentages were, but there was a fixed percentage as to what percent of the total Project could be spent for things other than wages.
[00:40:09]
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Oh. Franklin Roosevelt's whole concept of the WPA program was the employment of people. Not the buying of things. Of using people to enrich, protect, our natural resources. That was the whole idea [inaudible].
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: You mentioned there were three art centers started in Oregon at Salem, which—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Yeah, Salem and Gold Beach, and then there was another one, and I can't remember where the devil the other one was, but there were three of them.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: How did the one at Gold Beach ever get started? That's sort of unusual—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Was it Puyallup? Puyallup?
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: That sounds like a name in Oregon.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Puyallup, Oregon? Way up in the northern part of the state. Puyallup is [inaudible]. How do you spell Puyallup? That's a funny one. I know that's the way to pronounce it, but I couldn't tell you how to spell it. P-U-—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: It'd be northeastern Oregon?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Y-A-L-L-U-P? I don't know how you—tt would be north and there was nothing in northeastern Oregon except forest. No, Puyallup would be northwestern.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: It would be up near Portland then. Although Portland is actually inland, I guess 100 miles?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Well, I can't remember now. I just—you got me. I don't even know whether Puyallup—Puyallup may be in Washington—in the state of Washington for all I know, but I just seem to remember that name. Anyway, there was three of them in Oregon and the two that I can remember were Salem and Gold Beach, and Salem was a very vigorous one. And here I sit with my face hanging out and can't remember the names of the people who were there. You gave me one.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Byron Randall.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Byron Randall, right.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: But he was the local person.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: He was a local person. Now who were the people that I sent in there from out there—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Well, the girl that he married was sent from New York to work there as a sculpture instructor and her name was Helen—Randall, later but I can't—I don't know what her maiden name was now.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Her name was Helen?
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Helen.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: She and, I think, three maybe two—or three or four different people came out to Salem at different times. He mentioned their names, but I've forgotten them.
[Cross talk.] He was talking about what a strange effect they had on this small community because these sophisticated New York artists arrived in this little town. [Laughs.]
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Oh, we had some fascinating experiences with this because with their New York mannerisms of both dress and speech, and then of course, most of them by this time, you see, were thoroughly imbued with Abstract Expressionism, or at least Cubism anyway, you know.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: And—or in the period and all this was so foreign to these communities that it created some extremely tense situations at times, because the local communities would—they felt violated. We see this even today, that certain groups of people feel absolutely violated by the contemporary artists. It's as though you had stuck a hot knife in their belly and turned it, you know. And you only have to run an art museum even today to find out how true this is.
And of course, here were a lot of these communities where we started these art centers had no concept whatsoever—even the people who put money in it to back it, and supposedly were the more advanced people artistically in the community—had no idea that there was such thing as abstract art. Their whole concept of art was the pretty little Barbizon landscape, you see. Or the John Singer Sargent portrait or figure. And of course, to have these New York artists come in, [laughs] you know, disciples of Kokoschka [laughs], come in with—[laughs] pretty much of blow.
[00:45:16]
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: It must have been very stimulating for the young artists in the community though, because Byron says that he really received all of his art education through the art center in Salem. It was the first time that as a young, beginning painter he'd ever seen or encountered any of this kind of thing and he was—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: I can only recall that I never failed to be amazed at the vitality that was almost instantly generated in the community when these little art centers would open. And maybe it was because of was the way in which they were opened. They were opened as a part of the community not something superimposed on the community, that a lot of things were accepted that otherwise wouldn't have been accepted. For example, I don't think that they would—if we had imposed those art centers on them, if the WPA had just come in and said we are going to put an art center here, and put it there and paid the bill and put the people there, they wouldn't have—their message wouldn't have gotten through at all.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: They would have just sat there in a little island within the community, and nothing would have happened. But by doing it the way we did, the—there were kind of channels of communication laid down within the community so that sometimes you had to persuade these communities to accept an outside artist, but once they accepted them, they kind of felt that they were their baby, you see, and they were much more tolerant. I never fail to be amazed at this.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Oh. Another part of the concept that I think is significant has to do with the artist criteria. We didn't hope to go into these communities, you see, and inject the most avant-garde at all. We didn't go in and expect to hire, for instance, on a relief basis, only those artists who really were well-informed. Lots of times we hired the artist who was a pretty little landscape painter. Maybe a pretty amateurish one, but a lot of those people were only pretty little landscape painters and amateurish painters because they had never seen anything else. And a lot of people were awakened to doing very significant work by this program.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: In a way, the whole art center program was simply giving art a chance to grow from its own vitality, and it worked. It worked very well.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: I think, from some of the interviews I've done probably worked better for the artists involved than some of mural projects did, where they found themselves working as assistants and really not doing anything that they felt was terribly useful.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: This is one of the significant—this is a time to make a little significant comment about Holger Cahill. This was kind of the mark of the man. This was a man who was extremely sensitive to the arts, who was as knowledgeable in the history of art and in the contemporary art expression as any person that I knew. But he didn't attempt to impose this knowledge as the—even just as the basic criteria of the development of the Art Project.
[00:50:05]
He saw it as a—as giving art a chance to grow because art itself has that vitality. People want to express themselves and generally want to express themselves well, and he believed in this. And this was the way the whole art center program was operated. Obviously, an effort was always made to support—to find and support the superior talent, but not to the exclusion of this broader concept of simply giving art a chance to happen. For it was a true kind of grass roots, natural social and cultural development.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: And this undoubtedly is traced back to the breadth of the man Cahill.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: What was his background? Had he been a teacher of art?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Art historian and writer, I think. Art historian, writer, and critic, to the best of my knowledge.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Maybe it's—maybe I say that only because that's all I've ever known him as. I don't know that I know his early history extremely well, but it's available. I'm sure of that.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: It's—should be available in plenty of the history books. Following the developments up there, I think I then jumped down into the Southwest and got some projects started in Tucson, Phoenix, Albuquerque, where else? Look at my—this little list I made. Yeah, Tucson, Phoenix, Albuquerque—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: You never had anything going in Taos, New Mexico? The art [inaudible]—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Now wait a minute. Yeah.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: That was kind of art—sort of is still—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Yeah, it was the arty, arty, arty place.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: —community. [Laughs.]
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Yeah. Taos and Santa Fe. Sure. Sure, we did. We had an art center in Santa Fe.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Oh. Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Not in Taos, but in Santa Fe. As a matter of fact, a man that should be found, I don't know where he is now, and I know this man so well. Delightful guy. His last name is Hunter [Vernon Hunter]. Was the state director of the Art Project there, and he lived in Santa Fe, he did an extremely good job.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Was he an artist?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Yes, he was an artist. He was a painter. I have no particular comment to make about Hunter as a painter. My association with him was always that on the administrative side. So, I don't believe that I ever got around to making any value judgment on his ability as a painter. His taste in art was extremely good. His knowledge of the contemporary art scene was au courant. It was good.
He's a man that somebody should find and talk to because there was some very interesting things going on in that kind of desert area. I don't think the Albuquerque people would like me if I called it a desert area, but [Mary Fuller McChesney laughs.] that's the way I always thought of it. Some very interesting things were being done by that Project, by the way. Some of the work with the American Indian.
[00:55:11]
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: I was going to ask you about that. What did they do?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Oh, there were projects set up for the American Indian, and a lot of excellent work developed in sand painting or derived from sand painting and from their ceramics, their weaving. There was a lot of vital work of which I'm not—I can't talk about too much, but this is why I think Hunter is someone that should be located some way or another and talked to. And I'm sure that back in the archives, they'll run across his name. He was state director of the Project and somewhere along name and address and further information they'll have, I think.
Oh, there's another man that should be located, and I—his first name is Phil. Good painter. Was sent to—I sent him from New York to Tucson and Phoenix. I think he headquartered in Phoenix. His first name was Phil and his last name—he was an arthritic, and one of the reasons for sending him specifically, rather than to some other place, to Tucson and Phoenix was because of his problem with arthritis. Very able. Very able and personable guy. I want to say his last name was Gordon, but that isn't it. Phil—it may come to me later and if it does, I'll mention it. But once again, even with just the name Phillip to begin with in Tucson and Phoenix, I mean, this may be picked up someplace else in the Archives.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: But he could talk in a very knowledgeable way about the Tucson and Phoenix developments.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Did you go down to Texas when you were there in the Southwest, too?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: We could never really get any place in Texas. Texas was opposed to Mr. Roosevelt. Texas was opposed to the WPA.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Was it a democratic state at that time?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: I don't remember now. I try to remember, but Texas and WPA didn't get along at all.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Oh.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Certainly not in any of the arts. I tried, and spent considerable time trying to get an art center started in Fort Worth, and I think finally did get a small project going at Fort Worth, but it wasn't very much. It's rather funny, later, I went into Fort Worth and built their new modern art museum for them. Designed it and built it and opened it. Spent three years there. Herbert Beyer and I collaborated, and Herbert as the architect and I as the museum director, kind of collaborated to get this Fort Worth art center built. Since then, they have a second new one with money left by the famous Amon Carter, and I think the second one outshines the first one, but they now have two pretty good institutions there.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: I've heard they have a quite avant-garde gallery that shows a lot of New York painting, too, in Fort Worth.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: At both of them. The Fort Worth Art Center and the Amon Carter Museum.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: No, this was a private gallery.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Oh. Oh, yeah. What's her name?
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: I've forgotten the name of it.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Delightful gal runs it. Started it, and ran it, and then ultimately Ted Wiener [ph], I think backed it. Does that name you've run across?
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: No, it isn't.
[01:00:07]
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Ted Wiener is a very wealthy, independent oil operator. But the development of the Fort Worth Art Center is another story that a book needs to be written about. Selling art other than western to cow town, it was quite an interesting experience [laughs].
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: That's not where they have that all cowboy artist museum is it?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: [Coughs.] Amon Carter was the—one of the great powers in Texas. Extremely wealthy man. I mean, even wealthy as Texans go. And he was a devotee of Remington and Russell and so forth, the cowboy artists, and built—put together a quite impressive collection of maybe of the work of these two men, Russell and Remington. Not only paintings, but Remington and Russell bronzes and all sorts of things. And ultimately started—when he died, left money for a museum of American art and his concept—his idea was, of course, simply a museum to house this western stuff. But he has the misfortune to have a daughter named Ruth who married a man named Johnson, and Ruth had a mind of her own, and Ruth became extremely knowledgeable in the world of contemporary art. So, when Papa died, she was the wheel to—there's an Amon Carter, Jr. too, but Ruth, the daughter was the real wheel to start the new museum and to spend part the money that Papa left for a museum, you see. She took this word, “American Art” in its broadest possible terms and hired—old friend— it was at the Colorado Springs Art Museum. That's another art center we got to put down, Colorado Springs. Oh, and we both know his name.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Boardman Robinson.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Well, Boardman was always at the Colorado Springs Art Museum, but the guy who was director there—oh, isn't that funny that—boy the recollection of names. At any rate, he is now running the Amon Carter Museum, and doing a good job. And the program— the museum now is not only—not at all just Remington and Russell or the Amon Carter paintings and sculpture of the western period, but a true survey of American art. So, it's a good program. And the Fort Worth Art Center, which is just across the street is—has on its board of directors a whole group of people who are very well informed, good taste, and although I haven't been to the museum in about four or five years, I gather, doing a quite creditable job. But Fort Worth is not—I don't know why we get off on Fort Worth; it's not a—it's not really an outgrowth of this WPA thing at all.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Texas was a blank, chiefly because of the state administrator.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Was that [inaudible]—
[END OF TRACK AAA_defenb65_79_m.]
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: This is side two of tape one of the interview with Daniel Defenbacher. We just covered Texas and you were saying that nothing happened in Texas as far as the development of the art centers program was concerned.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Yeah. Along about that same time some more developments took place in the—in the—in the southeast—in the Deep South. And we got programs—rather good art center programs going in Mobile, Alabama, Greenville, Mississippi, I seem to recall Charleston, South Carolina. And then some very active—two very active programs in Nashville, Tennessee and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Nashville being the more important of the two.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: In the southern states did you find artists there who were available to work in the art center programs? Were they more art activity there at that time, I was wondering.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Very limited through all of the southern states. It was one of the major problems and why I believe the overall art center records will show that the major Art Project activity was in—was through the art centers, through almost all of the south and southeastern states, because simply there were very few employable artists. You found either no artists at all or the kind of romantic pictorialists of the beret and cape type, you know, with the flowing tie, who would have no part whatsoever of such a thing as federal aid or anything of this kind. They were much too much the nobility. And—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Were there portrait painters?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Portrait and landscape painters.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: And so, they didn't need help and they didn't—more importantly, they didn't want any. By and large the South was very impoverished in artistic expression. It was just dead. Well, I think this is true of architecture through the South. And let's face it, the South is—was and still is at a cultural low level.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: How about New Orleans? Do you have anything going there?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Oh, that's right. I—heavens, I almost forgot New Orleans. Yeah. Now what did go on there? I know—I know perfectly well that there was a Project there. And I believe that there was kind of an art center project. But I seem to recall that the major emphasis in New Orleans was on the Index of American Design. That most of the artists were employed to record for the Index, to make drawings, as they did, you know, of the artifacts of the—of the area. The wrought iron work, the woodwork, architectural details, all sorts of things of this nature. And I believe that was the major activity. And now, again, names escape me. The man that was there and who ran the Delgado Museum. This is a name that should not escape me because he was very able. I was entertained in his home many times.
[00:05:06]
And we did give some project assistance to the Delgado Museum. I think the reason that there was no art center in New Orleans was because there was a museum there, this Delgado Museum, and—so that there was really no need for a project. And such assistances we gave was probably given through the Delgado Museum. And so, I don't remember it in great detail at the moment. There was activity there. And I was in and out of New Orleans a lot. But the more interesting art center activity was over in Mobile, Alabama, just down the gulf a way.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Were many Negros involved in the art centers in the South?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Heavens, no.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: A person I interviewed from Florida said there were none in his classes at all.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: No, there weren't.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Oh, wait, no. He said something rather strange about Florida. He said that at Key West there were, and then as he went up to Jacksonville—was there was an art center in Jacksonville?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: There was an art center in Jacksonville.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: There were none.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: There were none.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: And he thought that at Key West it was because there was more of the Caribbean influence.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: I believe this is true.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: I believe this is true. Then, too, Charles Val Clear was sent down to Key West to start the Key West art center. And Charles Val Clear was a very able guy. Sometime later he went up to Akron, Ohio and started the Akron art center. In fact, I was instrumental in placing Val at Akron and went in on an advisory capacity to get the Akron art center started. Oh, I'd forgotten we did have a program—a WPA art center, at Akron, Ohio. And the present-day Akron art center is an outgrowth of that early WPA art center program.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Charles Val Clear, is that spelled V-A-L capital—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Capital V-A-L, capital C-L-E-A-R.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: For a time, Val Clear was also at St. Petersburg, but that was following—that was following the WPA project. And where Val is now, I am not quite sure. I haven't heard from him for three or four years. But it's a name to put down. And if the Archives can find him, he would be a source of some extremely interesting information.
Have to jump back a ways now to another very successful art center development, two others that are very successful. And the names of two people that should be—should be interviewed in depth, one was at Salt Lake City, Utah, and Donald B. Goodall.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: How's the last name spelled?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Goodall, G-O-O-D-A-L-L.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Do you know if he might still be in Salt Lake?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: No. Don is now the head of the art department for the University of Texas. Major job, major department. And an extremely brilliant and able man. And somebody, if they have to fly out from Washington, ought to go and interview Don. Don was at Salt Lake, built the Salt Lake City art center from scratch along—in the early days with me. Ran it for the duration of the WPA. Did a remarkable job and can tell—can feed into the Archives a lot of information about the Salt Lake City art center that would be much better than I could—I could give it.
[00:10:07]
Following that he went to Toledo as director of education of the Toledo Museum. And then to the University of Southern California as the head of the art department at the University of Southern California, where he made a distinguished contribution to that university. And is currently at the University of Texas. And if I sound like I'm blowing this guy's horn, I am. I mean he's a really sharp guy
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Was he one of the people that you selected—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: —to go out? How did you happen to meet him?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: He was one of the men that was interviewed, along with a whole group of young people and just answered the call. We put out a call along about 1936. I interviewed—we put out a call to artists in the area, in Chicago and New York mainly, asking them if they would like to travel and be relocated in one of these communities to either teach or serve as project director. And a whole lot of people answered the call. And I interviewed them and rejected some and accepted others. And Don was one of the most able of the—just happens to be probably the most able of the whole group that was selected.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Had he been a painter or an artist before? Or was he already in some sort of directing capacity?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Don was primarily an art historian.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: There are a great many people who got their—beginning of their careers started with WPA projects.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Don's primarily an art historian and has—although I know of few people who are more sensitive and more able in the field of contemporary art than Goodall. And this name will come up many times because he's known far and wide among the outstanding artists of the current scene.
We also started a sizable project in collaboration with the Denver Art Museum with Otto Karl Bach, who is the director of the Denver Art Museum—still is the director of the Denver Art Museum. He was the last I heard, anyway. Though it was—it wasn't really known as a Denver art center. It was simply the educational project of the Denver Art Museum. Once again, I'd recommend that Otto Bach be interviewed by someone. And he can give you the much more detailed history of really the WPA art development in that whole Rocky Mountain region. I believe that Otto—I'm not sure of this, but I believe Otto served as regional director for the Rocky Mountain region. This would have to be checked.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: But he certainly would be a person who would know the story of that region.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: The Salt Lake City art center was rather late starting actually.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Well, now you see, we've covered only about a year's time here.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Oh, I see. Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: This was a very rapid development. I was on and off planes. I was on and off airplanes back and forth across the United States continually. I was just traveling all the time.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:15:15]
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Very seldom in Washington. Because we were—we were just—this thing was growing so fast. At about this same time, now this would be—this would be 1936, '37, we started art centers at Sioux City and Des Moines, Iowa. I haven't mentioned those yet, have I?
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: No.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Sioux City and Des Moines, Iowa. The Sioux City art center was really a major effort and very well done. The director that I put in there was a young man named Bob White, a painter. And I believe that Bob was originally from Chicago. There were other people and names once again I miss. Ah, finally got one, Helen Michaels, Mrs. Michaels, M-I-C-H-A-E-L-S. And her husband was owner of a family business, the Michaels Seed Company. And I can't remember his first name at the moment, although it probably will come to me. Helen was the driving force in Sioux City, behind the Sioux City art center development. And I—it's my opinion that that Sioux City art center is still going. It was—it was much bigger than the city would—a much bigger art center program than the city would—you would normally think of in a town like Sioux City, Iowa. Bigger than the Des Moines one. Once again, in Des Moines, the Cowles family came into the development there. In this case it was Gardner Cowles.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: This is the newspaper family you're now connected with?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: The newspaper familiar that was Spokane, Washington as well. And I guess I said Spokane was the home—I—of that family operation, the beginning of it. Maybe it was Des Moines. I don't remember which it was. But anyway, Gardner Cowles was in—was in Des Moines. And yes, there was a Cowles Foundation, and there is a Cowles Foundation. And I believe that the current Des Moines Art Center is an outgrowth of that. And you know that there is a very good art center in Des Moines now. You—maybe you don't know this, but there is.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: No, [laughs] I didn't know.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: The building was designed by—who the—it was one of the famous architects. Who designed—Neutra. No, not Neutra. Oh, good Heavens. Anyway, I was the—when it was finally opened, I was the—what do you call it—the inaugural speaker, along with Thomas Watson. That's something. Seeing the two of us on the same platform together. This was kind of—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Excuse my ignorance, but who is Thomas Watson?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: IBM.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Oh.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: The think—the think man [inaudible]. Thomas B. Watson, is it? Thomas? Yeah, it was Thomas Watson. Thomas B. Watson, sure. IBM. A conservative of which there was no greater conservative. [They laugh.] The Des Moines art center activity was comparatively small, but one that was intensively pursued because of—there was in existence this Cowles Foundation with money set aside by the Cowles family, I think.
[00:20:18]
I think I'm being accurate on this. I think it was all Cowles. It may have been some other people involved in this, too. But there was a foundation there. But the money from the foundation could not be spent for an art development until it had been matched in some way by the community. And the Des Moines art center was established with the thought in mind that it would ultimately stir up enough interest that the foundation funds could be freed and the community would raise enough money, and it finally worked. And there is now a very impressive Des Moines art center.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Was Grant Woods still in Iowa at that time?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Yes, he was still in Iowa then.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Was he involved in the program there?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: No, not to any great extent.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Not at all, I don't believe.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Were there local artists there that you could use? Or did you have to bring people from New York too?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Well, Bill Friedman, who is—I don't think we got his name on tape, did we?
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: No, we didn't.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: William Friedman, who is currently professor of design at San Francisco State, was the director of the Des Moines art center, in the beginning of it. Shortly—very shortly after the art center started, within a year I would say, the—we opened the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. And—within a year or two years anyway—we opened the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and Bill Friedman came up with me—or rather I brought him up to Minneapolis as my assistant director at the Walker Art Center. Now, I should get that on the tape. That, I think, was in 19—about 1939 that we started the Walker Art Center Program in Minneapolis. I got it started—which I'll talk about at some length—and then resigned as assistant national director and moved to Minneapolis as director of the Walker Art Center—and Walker Art Center WPA project. But there were some other developments along in here possibly that I—that should be mentioned—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: In the Middle West? How about Nebraska?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: In the Middle West.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Did you have anything in Omaha?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Omaha, Nebraska. Omaha, Lincoln. It seems to me that there was something going on there, but it's very faint in my memory. So, for the moment at least I can't—I can't talk about it. I can talk about Topeka, Kansas. [Coughs.] I would guess that it was about 1937 that we started a program in Topeka, Kansas. And the delightful gal who was there and head of the Project and head of the art center has been and, I think, still is the director of the—what— is it the Leventhal Galleries in New York? I'll bet you know this. A dealer in New York. Oh boy, is my memory rusty. Oh, this'll come to me.
[00:25:01]
But anyway, we started an art center in Topeka, and it was a very healthy and interesting activity. I can't—I can't report on where it stands at the moment because I haven't even thought about Topeka, Kansas for 15 years. So I don't know what's happening there. But somebody could do a little inquiry and find out if there's any residual activity. Probably is. There probably is a Topeka art museum now.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Was that the only art center that you had in Kansas? How about Kansas City?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: No, there wasn't anything at Kansas City. There was activity in Kansas City, but once again it was through the—I'm quite sure through the Kansas City Art Museum. Because Kansas City already had an art museum. There was considerable activity at Wichita.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Did you have an art center there?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: No, I don't think it was an art center per se, but there was—there was Project activity there. I don't remember the nature of it. But someone ought to take a look at that too. I have some feeling that it, again, was more related to the Index of American Design. Why it should be in Wichita, I don't know. It had something to do with the development of the Wichita Art Museum. And there is—or some years ago, at least, there was a rather progressive art museum development there.
We also started one at Little Rock. I can't—I can't recall any particular stories about the Little Rock one except that I have some hazy recollection that it was very difficult. It seems to me that the political atmosphere at—in Arkansas was not particularly favorable. [Laughs.] I would say at the moment that it hasn't improved very much.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: [They laugh.] Did you go into Missouri at all with the program? St. Louis?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: I—it certainly must have—we certainly must have done something. I'm sure that there was a Project in St. Louis. In fact, I'm positive of it. But for the life of me I can't—I have no particular recollections. My guess is that this will come through the Chicago channels if you can get to Increase Robinson, who was the director of the Chicago Project.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: I would guess that Increase also served as kind of regional director for the area. And she should be able to fill the Archives in on the—on a lot of that story of that whole region. I think Increase served as regional director for that area, for the whole midwestern area. There was activity in the—in both Michigan and Wisconsin. And I know there was. And I can't for the moment pin it down. It seems to me that there was something developed in Madison, Wisconsin and in Jackson—in Jackson, Michigan.
[00:30:01]
And before we're through some of that may come back to me, as to what happened there. I have a feeling that the most vital areas of the Project, from the standpoint of activity, were of course the—were New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, Los Angeles. And this would be—you would—you would expect this to be true. Of course, there was a great deal of easel painting and sculpture activity in—throughout the Middle West.
The Index of American Design was very strong, of course, in New England—very strong in New England—in the—in the South, particularly around the New Orleans area, and in the far West—southwest, with considerable emphasis on the American Indian. Other than that, the—really the major activity was the art center programs scattered in these places that I've been mentioning all around the country. I'm looking down the list here—this little pencil list I made to see whether any of the—any major developments that I've forgotten about. And we may want to come back to some of these. There was a lot of Index of Design activity also around Savannah, Charleston, as you would expect because of the—just the early history.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. When you were—when you were working as a—setting up these art centers in these small communities did you ever have any contact with the mural department of the WPA? I was wondering whether it might have been likely that a community that would become interested in having an art center might also become interested in having WPA murals.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Well, now, remember that there was a Treasury mural project. You mustn't get these two—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: —confused. There was a Treasury mural project which was totally separate from the Federal Art Project.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: But was concurrent with it.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Was concurrent with it.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: And may of the murals that were done in post offices and colleges and public buildings around the country were part of the Treasury project under—what was the man's name? Oh, good heavens, I should remember his name. Now, we also—the Federal Art Project also did murals, but it was—it was very often an extension of the easel project. What we called at that time the easel project. Easel just kind of got bigger, that's all, and got on walls. Now, Eddie Cahill's memoirs may give a slightly different picture of this, but this was the picture that I have, at least. The Federal Art Project was primarily concerned with easel painting, though we did do murals and mosaics and all sorts of things like the—what is now the Maritime Museum, which was an aquatic park in San Francisco—was a WPA Federal Art Project project.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Those—not too many of those got started though in the Middle West and the South—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: No.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: —that kind of large WPA project?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: No.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: But there were easel painters on the easel project along with—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Easel projects along with the—yes, there were easel projects along with the art center projects in a great many of the states, and in places like, I'm sure, Wisconsin through the Middle West.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: You had a lot of easel painting projects that were not at all related to them. And painters were just—were just put on relief rolls to paint pictures.
And they painted pictures and did sculpture, and did ceramics, and turned a certain percentage of their work in to the Project.
[00:35:13]
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: In the small communities, say in the Midwest where there were both an art center going and an easel project, would there be any connection between the two? For example, would the easel painters show their—exhibit their paintings—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Oh, yes.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: —in the art center [inaudible]—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Oh, yes. And very often did a lot of their work in the art centers. And sometimes would teach in the art centers. Sometimes not. Some of them were not fit for—as teachers at all, weren't disposed toward teaching, so they wouldn't be used. But very often the painters that were employed on the easel project would also serve from time to time on the—on the teaching staff of the various art centers. Each art center had a dual program: one, exhibitions, aimed at informing the community on the arts, and the other was teaching, conducting classes, lecture programs, meetings—discussion meetings, all sorts of things. Everything that you might consider of an educational nature where there was actual participation of people. So, you had the two—the two kinds of things taking place in every art center, one a continuous gallery or exhibition program, the other a continuous class program.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: The exhibition program you also organized shows of eastern artists to be sent out to the West?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Yes. We maintained, in Washington, an exhibition service, Federal Art Project exhibition service. It had some name that I don't remember at the moment. Maybe it's given in this manual here. I think it is. Let's look, see what it says.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: What is the name of the book that you're looking through?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Oh, this is the Federal Sponsored Community Art Center Manual. In about 1938 we finally got around to actually putting out a manual for the art centers. This was a—well, a WPA handicraft project, project number 7040, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, sponsored by the Milwaukee County and Milwaukee State Teachers' College. It's on the fly leaf of the—of the manual. It's hard-bound, cloth-covered, quite handsomely done by, as it says here, the WPA Handicraft Project in Wisconsin. So, now we know what happened in Wisconsin. [They laugh.] And the—so it's on the tape, the table of contents of the book gives—there's an introduction giving the general plan and organization and the general operation of the art centers, section on planning the project, project procedure involving staff organization, art center activities, art center school activities, research and other activities, public information services, and the reports and copies of the reports and records that should be filled out by each one of the centers. Quite complete little manual.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Who wrote the manual? Do you remember?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Two or three of us. Tom Parker, who was deputy director of the project, and I probably did the principal work, with Eddie Cahill actually doing some editing and making his contribution to it as well.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: The bulk of—the bulk of the—of the—of the work—of the development of it was my own because it came from—it really grew out of the organization and procedural structure which I developed for the art centers as I—as I developed them.
[00:40:13]
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. What was the difference between a deputy assistant—or deputy and an assistant?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Well, in WPA terms the deputy was the first assistant.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Oh, the deputy director would be first, and the assistant director was—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Then there were—there were three assistant directors as. I recall, Mildred Holzhauer, and the man in charge of the Index of American Design, whose last name, if I remember correctly, was Gold, Arthur Gold? I'm very apologetic to him that I don't remember, but I don't.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: What was her job?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Mildred Holzhauer was pretty largely assigned the easel project development, I would say. Mildred came from Newark really and had worked at the Newark museum and—under what was the man's name? Dana was the man's name that was—started the Newark museum, wasn't it? Dana? Stuart Davis was at the Newark museum at one time, at about the same time that Mildred was. Mildred I'm sure is active in the art field—in the art world probably in New York someplace. And I would be reasonably certain that she has either already been interviewed or her name has appeared many times in the—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Oh.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: —in the—in various interviews. She'll be picked up. And it seems to me that there was one other assistant director. No, I guess that's it. Tom Parker, myself, Mildred Holzhauer, and this other man whom I can't remember. I was hoping that there'd be a date on this—on this manual, but it doesn't—there doesn't seem to be a date. But there is a project number, so it could be traced down very easily. I don't see a date anyplace. Are we wasting a lot of time on that tape?
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: No. I was going to ask you though, did you involve yourself in any of these sort of projects like the manual thing? Or was that the only one that you did? Were there other brochures that you got out to help the people in the art centers—establish art centers.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Oh, yes. There would be—there would be many things in the archives in Washington of the Art Project. And those archives must be there someplace.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Directives that you would have sent out from Washington to—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Yes, directives that we would have sent out, and correspondence and instructional procedures things, and policy-making directives, and all sorts of things, should be there to back this up.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: How was—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Well—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: We're sort of in the Middle West. I was going to ask you though, how was the policy making actually handled once an art center was established in a community, were—and they had a board of directors of their own. Were they completely free to make decisions about running the art center or did they have direct contact with you about decisions they'd make? How much connection was there between Washington and the directors of, say, an individual art center?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: There was very close connection. I was constantly in touch—not only I but through Tom Parker and Cahill. We were constantly in touch with the art centers, helping them, and believe me, they all needed help. And were very willing to take the assistance. Because many times—many times they needed—they needed help. When building exhibits, they needed help with personnel. They really needed guidance so that there was never any problem that I can remember with this at all.
[00:45:11]
So, we had a very close—in addition to that, art centers within a general area were constantly helping one another. So, there was an interchange of information between the art centers, in many instances. For example, the Sioux City art center, would make an exhibition—would put an exhibition together and then send it on to one of the other art centers so that they would exchange exhibition material. Many times, one of the art centers would build an exhibition and then funnel it into the—into the Washington Exhibition Service, where it would then be maybe sometimes repackaged and sent back out again. That Washington Exhibition Service became quite a big thing. Actually, we were not only at—finally sending—circulating exhibitions out to the WPA art centers, but were lending—sending exhibitions of WPA work out to museums all over the United States. It was a big program.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Toward the close of the WPA it was—it was really a big program. And as I recall, the workshops and assembly areas and so forth, for the service, were located in the Smithsonian Institute. That's my recollection at the moment.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: How did you manage that? Did you receive work from outlying areas that was shipped to you? Say from San Francisco, would work from the easel project be went back to Washington for you to—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Yes. easel—that is, work by the artists in all of the states would be selected periodically by the regional directors or perhaps by Mildred Holzhauer, who would go out and look at things. By various means we would make selections of work to be sent in to the Exhibition Service at Washington.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: And these things were then put into exhibitions and circulated around the United States. It was a program that should be looked into because I think it probably had considerable impact. And looked into perhaps by locating Mildred Holzhauer and getting her recollections of the importance and—of that activity and the extent of it. Because as I recall in the later years of the problem Mildred was in charge of that activity.
We haven't talked much about New York. Of course, New York again was a—you know, an area unto itself, if for no other reason than it was so large. Undoubtedly, the New York Art Project was as large as all the rest—in dollar volume perhaps, and personnel volume—as large as all the rest in the United States put together. I don't know this to be an actual fact, but I wouldn't doubt that it would be true.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: And of course, the person who was the director of the New York Project was Audrey McMahon. Mrs. Audrey McMahon. And I am sure that her—that name has come up many times in the—in various interviews and is all through the records and the archives. I don't know—I haven't heard of Audrey. I have no idea whether she is still alive or not.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: What were the main kinds of projects set up in New York? You had easel projects there, and mural?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: The big ones were the easel and—easel projects—easel project. But those are the big ones.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Not really too much mural work, although there was some I think.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: There was some.
[00:50:05]
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Were there art centers in New York City?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Yeah, there were some art centers in New York City. There was one in Harlem. There was one in Brooklyn. There was one in Manhattan. And—you getting a little feedback or something?
[Audio break.]
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: We were just talking about New York.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Yeah, we were talking about New York. And I was talking about the art centers there. And they did have art centers. They were not under my direction. I would go in occasionally in a kind of advisory capacity. But I actually was not responsible for them.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Who was your director in New York?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Audrey McMahon.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Oh, she took charge of the art center program, too?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: She was—she was in charge of everything—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Oh.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: —in New York. She was the New York City director. And to all intents and purposes New York City was a region unto itself, you see. So that it operated almost autonomously within the [laughs]—within the total art center—national art center program.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: From people I've interviewed from New York it certainly was very different there from the way the Project developed on the West Coast. And I was curious about the amount of trouble that they had on the Project there with the Artists' and Writers' Union, the number of demonstrates and—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Completely different—I think there were two or three that happened in San Francisco, but they never seemed to be of the magnitude of the ones in New York. Why was that?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Oh, I think only because in New York you were dealing with a much more advanced group of artists. You were—you were in the art center of America. And so, the people on the Project were of a much different caliber than they were out in the other areas. And the artists in New York had the feeling, you know, that they were it. They were American art, and from them emanated all of America's artistic strength so that you had a—psychologically a total different situation in New York than you had anyplace else, even in Chicago, where you had a lot of the same kinds of problems but still not of the magnitude that existed in New York. So that the artists in New York were more vocal. They were equipped to be more vocal. They were bound therefore to have a greater hand in—and want to have a greater hand in running their own projects. So, you had all sorts of these demonstrations and objections and fights, and all sorts of things going on. Just things that would automatically occur when something is done, like the Project, to ferment this kind of activity.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: How was it considered in Washington—by the people in Washington, when they had these demonstrations? People have told me—artists have told me about one where oh, 200 or 300 artists were arrested because they had a sit-down strike at the—in Mrs. McMahon's office. I was wondering what kind of repercussions this might have had on the project headquarters in Washington, or if it had any.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: My recollection—my recollection was that these were welcomed as healthy signs. This was a sign of strength, of the awakening of the voice, you see. I don't believe I can—I can—I personally can never recall that in Washington we ever objected to this sort of thing happening. Lots of times I'm sure we had to—we had to pretend that we objected. We had to stand on the official, you know, podium and act like WPA Project administrators when in reality our hearts were with the artists.
[00:55:07]
I don't see how—I don't see how it could have been otherwise. Certainly there may have been instances when the artists were wrong, but so what. [Laughs.] The important thing was that something was happening.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Did any of these demonstrates ever have any direct effect on the management of the Project, I wonder. I think a great many of them were involved with raising the pay for the artists. I wonder if they ever had any real influence.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: I would guess that they did have a real influence. I like to think, at least, that there was a constant sensitivity in Washington to the situation of the artist and that there was a constant—the ear was always open to the feedback. The Federal Art Project was not conceived or run as a thing imposed on the artist. It was not run to direct the artist. There was no effort to impose a direction for American art. Cahill—I'm sure Cahill's whole concept of the Project was one to create a vehicle through which American art and the American artist could grow. And he was not God. Never in his own eyes was he God. This was never—there was never an effort to guide or direct. Maybe to guide, but not to direct. Not—he wasn't our leader under any circumstances. The whole concept of the Project—I don't know how to say it otherwise— was to create and nourish a soil in which art and the artist could grow. Therefore, I would—I would—I think I'm safe in saying that there was never any great concern over these demonstrations and protests and so forth.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: This may have been the ideal of the director in Washington but having interviewed artists in the San Francisco area and some people from New York, there was a feeling among some of them that more advanced work stylistically was rejected by the WPA mural projects because it was too abstract at the time. I was curious about this because one person who mentioned it was Charles Howard. Do you know his work?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Oh, sure.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Yes. Well, he had a—did a design for a mural—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: —in San Francisco which was rejected. And he felt it was rejected because of its stylistic advancement. But as I understand it in New York, Gorky, people like that did murals—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: But you—this would—if this did happen, would it have been because of some regional director's personal idea?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: I think it's amazing. I—my reaction is it's amazing that it didn't happen more often than it did, and it did.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Because remember we were a public project. These are public funds. We had to rely upon public support. We were in the public eye. And this was at a time when abstract art was anathema. And it still is in many years. It was anathema to the—to the public eye. [They laugh.]
And that we were able to do as much as we did to get as many avant-garde expressions accepted, I think, was rather phenomenal. If there was any stifling of expression, if the artists that you have talked to felt stifled, that stifling did not come from the—from the major directing forces in the Project. They could have come from community pressures, or could at times come from a local director's pressures, or the inability of a local director to cope with the public phase of the problem.
[01:00:31]
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: These things could have occurred. And there could undoubtedly have been instances in which a very strong—let's use the word progressive just in a—in a—in the broadest sense, progressive kind of thing got rejected. But it wasn't—it—I don't think that anybody who claims that it was the earmark of the Project, could be justified in that at all, could prove it.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: I don't think it was true at all. Obviously, we had all sorts of problems like the one—the famous problem with the Rincon murals. You know, communists, the whole business.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: That's Anton Refregier's mural?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Right, Anton Refregier.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. In San Francisco.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Yeah.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: That was under the Treasury project, wasn't it?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: That was the Treasury project. Yeah.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: But that whole hassle, you know, went on for years and was revived again about eight or ten years ago, wasn't it?
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. After the war.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: After the war, yeah. What did they do—did they—are they still there by the way?
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: They're still there. [Laughs].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: They're still there. [Laughs]. I haven't been up there recently.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: I'm not sure if Roosevelt's picture is in them, but they're there. [They laugh.]
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Hey, where is Ref, I wonder. Has anybody ever heard of him?
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Yeah. He's in Woodstock, New York. He just published a book.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Is that so?
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Gee.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: He made a trip to Europe and the book is drawings that he—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Yeah.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: —had done there.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Yeah.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Who were some of the artists that you knew in New York on the Project?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Holy cats.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: [Laughs] You knew them all, I guess.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: [Laughs.] Oh, boy. Yeah. I suppose I should put down the names. I don't think we mentioned—I mentioned some of them when we were talking before we got on the tape. But some of the guys who would have marvelous stories to tell would be Mitch Siporin, Eddie Millman, Jack Levine. These would be from the Chicago days. By all means get in touch with them to talk over the Chicago days. More so than the New York ones, because they'd have some fabulous stories to tell about the unionization activities of the artist group in Chicago and some of the marvelous fights that occurred there. Good lord, you asked me to name the names of the New York group. And you know, you can just go through them: Kienbusch, Julio de Diego, Chaim Gross, George Grosz, Stuart Davis.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Philip Guston was on—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Phil Guston, yeah.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Willem de Kooning? Did you know him?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Oh, I didn't know de Kooning, either Bill or Elaine, very well. No, I didn't know them. They were—they were on the Project. I just didn't get to know them personally. Good heavens, come up with some more names.
[END OF TRACK AAA_defenb65_20_m.]
D. S. DEFENBACHER: I would—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Side one of tape two of interview with Daniel Defenbacher.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Tape three, isn't it?
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Side one of tape two, did I say that?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Side one of tape two?
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Oh, what do you do? Tape on both sides of the tape? Is that it?
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Yes, mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Oh, I see. I didn't know that. While we were in New York—by the way, before we—before we get away from there, I would be reasonably certain that the Archives have gotten to Elizabeth McCausland. If not, by all means, they should get in touch with Elizabeth because she worked with Eddie Cahill in so far as they could work together in some of the documentation. And—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: How was her name spelled?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Capital-M-C-capital-C-A-U-S-L-A-N-D. And I believe I saw on the archives—one of the archive's letterheads or folios or folders, I saw Elizabeth's name.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Oh. Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: So, I believe that she is in on the committee in some way or another.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: What was her job in the WPA?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Writer, historian. Writer and historian, primarily. She is an art writer. And has been all of her life, I guess.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Um. And will be a very rich source of—the kind of person who would have documentation too—oh, I'm—I would be positive that she has been bled dry by this time—information.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: We've been talking earlier about some of the people that you knew on the New York Art Project. And you discovered a catalog from the Pepsi-Cola Show in 1946—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Yeah, I just happened to pick up the catalog of the 1946 Third Annual Exhibition of the Pepsi-Cola Company. Most of the artists will remember the Pepsi-Cola Company annual competitions. There were four or five of them in consecutive years, the Pepsi-Cola Company buying paintings to add to its permanent collection. Roland McKinney was the director of the project for the Pepsi-Cola Company. McKinney was—prior to that time, had been—wasn't he director of the Brooklyn Museum, I believe. And was followed at the Brooklyn Museum by—I don't recall now. Blake McGodwin [ph], no? No, he was at Toledo. I've forgotten now who followed him.
But if we wanted to go down the list of this we'll just refresh my memory of artists who were—who were active in the Project: Louis Bosa, Virginia Cuthbert, John Heliker, Sidney Laufman, I Rice Pereira, Everett Spruce. See who we got here: Milton Avery. I wonder—I think Julien Binford's name here—and it seems to me that he was in Virginia. It seems to me that he was on the Project.
[00:05:00]
You might—somebody might inquire about that. Isabel Bishop. Byron Browne, I didn't know him very well, but I remember that—I seem to remember that he was one of the people whose work constantly appeared and reappeared in the various exhibitions. Kenneth Callahan, another one. Francis Chapin was active. Gladys Rockmore Davis. Francis de Erdely was active in the—in the Los Angeles Project, I'm sure. Joe DeMartini was on the Project.
Boy, I go down this list and they almost all would be—Lamar Dodd was active in—down in the south. It seems to me Lamar was—oh, was—I believe that he was director of the—of the Project for one of the states in the south. Otis Dozier in Texas. It seems to me there was some Project activity in Texas and these people were involved in it. But I think it was limited and it was of an easel project nature, but limited in its scope.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: There was some Treasury Department murals painted in the post office down there, of course.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Yeah. Somebody ought to see Phil Evergood because he was active in the Project. Emlen Etting was active. Sylvia Fine, and Lorser Feitelson was active too, wasn't he?
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Oh, yes. He was head of Los Angeles.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: He was head of [inaudible]. Sure. I go down this list and almost every name—but I'm largely picking those that I very specifically either knew or was reasonably familiar with. William Gaw was active here in San Francisco. Or was he down in southern California?
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: No, here in San Francisco.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Here in San Francisco. Bill Gaw, yeah. Is he still around?
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Is he? Ruth Gikow, I seem to remember. Xavier Gonzalez [ph] was. Harry Gottlieb, Stephen Greene. Let's go down some more. Phil Guston, Bob Gwathmey. I wonder how Bob's doing? Have you run across him recently?
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: No, I haven't.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Great guy.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: We saw Philip Guston's retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum when we were in New York.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Yeah.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: He had the whole museum.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Yeah, terrific. He had quite a struggle for a long time too. Quite a struggle, but he made it. I mentioned John Heliker. But I'd like to see a lot of these people again, having not seen them for so long. Here's Bob Howard, his brother Charles doesn't seem to be in this one.
[00:10:03]
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Let's see, the man who I interviewed from Florida, Arnold Blanch, he mentioned.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Arnold Blanch. Arnold was active in the Project. He—I don't think that Arnold probably didn't seem to have been in this show. Probably didn't submit to it or something of the kind, I don't know. A lot of names missing in here. Maybe they'll come to me.
Karl Knaths, who is not listed here but should be someone to talk with. I'm trying, now, to pick those people that someone might want to find and interview. Jim Lechay, if anybody can find him. The last I heard of him he was teaching at the University of Iowa. Erle Loran, and he certainly must be around. Let's see, who—seems to me Fred Nagler—have you heard of him?
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: No, I haven't.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Was active in the New York Project in some way. Arthur Osver, Elizabeth Olds, Nordfeldt, were people who would probably be a source of information. Gregorio Prestopino would probably be a source of information too. George Picken, Abe Rattner—is he still around? Do you know?
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: I think he is.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Yeah.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: I saw an article in an art magazine just a few days ago, about his new work.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: And Phil Reisman also. This is going a little slowly but it's the only way I can—I can really do this phase of it. I wonder if Zoltan Sepeshy is still available to talk with. He should be talked to, because he had some—quite some influence. And here is Millard Sheet's name, and I've already mentioned him.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: What was his actual position in Los Angeles? Do you remember?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Well, at that time I think Millard was just an artist. He was just a painter.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: I don't recall whether—what officially what his—whether he had an official administrative kind of job with the Project at that time. I don't remember whether he did or not. I wasn't as close to the—to the Los Angeles Project as I was the San Francisco one.
[00:15:06]
Miron Sokole of—I suppose that's the way it's pronounced—the way I've always pronounced it, is a name that I remember. I didn't know him. William Fond [ph], and there's another—someone right in here that—I'm in the Ts. There's someone in there that I—no, it doesn't come to me at the moment. Karl Zerbe was active and could be talked with. Well, other names may come as we go along. This is—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: I was going to ask you about what was happening in Washington, D.C. itself as far as the Project was concerned. What kind of activity did they sponsor there?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: [Laughs.] It was too close to home. I don't remember.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Oh [laughs].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: I don't remember. I spent so little time in Washington. I spent as little time as possible in Washington, and most of it out, so that I don't recall. I'm sure that there must have been, certainly, easel project activity in Washington. But I don't recall specifically.
Well, to come back to the art center thing, I think maybe we have just about come to the—to the Walker Art Center development, so far as the Art Center program is concerned. By this time—this would be up to around 1939. And, you know, the program was now three and a half to four years underway. And I had been looking for some opportunity in the project to start a major art center project. A really big one. And the opportunity just came up in Minneapolis, where a lumber tycoon had died. And this tycoon, who had—the name was Walker, had, during his lifetime, thought to make himself, you know, remembered for his good works by collecting—making a—building a collection of art, old masters, and oriental, mainly Chinese jades and ceramics.
And as typical of those collectors, gathered together a very questionable collection of paintings and sculpture and objet d'art. But just before he died, he built a museum. Quite a sizable structure. And he built that in about 1925 or '26, and then in 1927 he died. And the museum—oh, in his will established a foundation but made the serious mistake of—I'm going to say some grim things here. [Mary Fuller McChesney laughs.]
Made the serious mistake of appointing his sons as the members of the—of the board of directors of the foundation. The sons were also the inheritors of the estate. The rest of the estate.
[00:20:07]
So, their allegiance to the foundation was rather strained. So, the foundation, through the years between 1927 and 1939, just simply starved to death. Theoretically, the foundation was established for the gallery was to get one-sixth of the estate and, therefore, one-sixth of the income of the company, which was the estate.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: And this was the second largest lumber company in the United States. The Red River Lumber Company. But, unfortunately, by one way or another the foundation just didn't see any of the money. So, in 1939, there the museum sat quite respectable in size and in appearance. Um, well—and had one caretaker in charge of it, who religiously opened the doors, and charged 10¢admission, and swept the floors, and dusted the paintings, and objects and that was it. The—so, we went in there and organized a group of citizens under the name of the Minnesota Arts Council. And the Minnesota Arts Council raised money—[Phone rings.]
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Where were you?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Oh, so we formed this Minnesota Arts Council. And they got busy and raised money. And then, we made a deal with the Walker family to take it over as a federal art project and operate it as a community art center. Well, this gave us a building of some—oh, I've forgotten now—probably 70[000] or 80,000 square feet. A good-sized building, three stories.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Why were they willing to do this? Because the federal money would—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: They were glad to get out from any, any expense involved at all.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: And they weren't fundamentally interested in the art museum. As a matter of fact, the family, by and large, thought that Grandfather had literally raped them by leaving one-sixth of the estate to his art museum. They should have had the money. "What did this idiot do? Take that money away from me?" This was the kind of feeling. So, they were delighted to see it get out from under—they were delighted to get out from under the responsibility.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: And, of course, it was put to them that they would be doing a great community service by allowing the museum to be operated as a community project. So, everything fell into place. It was–there was happiness on both sides. And so, it was taken over and became the—by far, the largest of the WPA art center projects.
And I'm quite frank to admit—I did then, and will again now, that I saw in this an opportunity to build a significant kind of museum of modern art. And the type of museum that, up to that time, didn't exist in America. A museum that was really built on the basis of community education and participation. Not built on the basis of a repository for rich collectors' works of art.
[00:25:00]
And so, I left the job in Washington as assistant national director and, to all intents and purposes, made myself the director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
The structure of the project was essentially the same as that of the smaller community arts centers around the country. It had a two-fold program. One, an exhibition program and two, a—an educational program involving any and all forms of community individual participation in the activities. The classes for teaching art, lectures, symposia, meetings, extension activities, building activities at the museum, which then could go out to the public schools, to the colleges, to other public institutions around the area.
In the beginning, I believe we had a staff of about 45 people. That's my recollection. That staff at one t—at its peak probably had in the neighborhood of 60 or 70 people on it. We had—we—in the basement of the building, which was quite large, we built an entire school and conducted both day and evening classes, for both children and adults. The emphasis, again, was on adult education more than on children's education. In fact, what we tried to do through the art center was to develop interest in a children's art museum in Minneapolis. I don't think that it was ever extremely successful, but that was our effort at least. We were primarily interested in adult programs.
Gradually, we became interested in originating exhibitions and programs that could be sent out to other areas of the country. Both to other Federal Art Project art centers, and to other museums. And, actually, became rather well-known for exhibitions which we originated and then were circulated to other museums, even the Museum of Modern Art, and the Metropolitan, and the Boston Museum, Chicago Art Institute, and so forth and so on.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Do you remember what some of those were? They wouldn't be work of just WPA painters?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: They would not be. They—some of them were work of WPA artists. But a lot of them were other works. For instance, we did the first comprehensive exhibition of Le Corbusier. We did one of the early exhibitions sent to Europe by the State Department, of contemporary art. We did one of the early exhibitions of American watercolor painting, and published a catalog which was for the State Department which was done in—the catalog was done in Portuguese— English, Portuguese, and—oh, I've got a copy over here, I think. [Heard faintly] American watercolor U.S.A. Spanish. Spanish, Portuguese, and English.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Is the copy of the catalog of the Watercolor—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: The catalog.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: —U.S.A. Show.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Surveyed from 1870 to 1946.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. With a text jointly done by Lloyd Goodrich of the Whitney Museum and myself.
But the assembly of the exhibition was done in the Walker Art Center. And I think it was still under WPA at the time.
[00:30:10]
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: I'm not sure of that, but I think so. Anyway, it's one of the kinds of things that came out of the WPA Project. We—while still a WPA Project, we made the first beginnings of what we called the Everyday Art Gallery, which was a continuous gallery program surveying the utilitarian arts.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Oh—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Contemporary utilitarian arts. Objects of good design. Ultimately, that became a major program of the Art Center. And we began publishing a quarterly magazine, which was the first published magazine of—by a museum on the particular subject. And I have the first four or five years of that quarterly on—in files right down there.
So, as a part of the WPA Art Center concept, we began to branch out in our—in the—in museum interest. Branch out from painting and sculpture to such things as industrial design; architecture; everyday art, as we called it, design and useful objects, in other words. And we began to develop the kinds of educational projects and programs that are now fairly common among the art museums of America. But at that time were not common at all. True, some of the museums, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago had educational departments, but they were, by and large, in their infancy.
So, that the—this basic concept of the Federal Art Project community art center now was kind of going up and was becoming a full-fledged community museum concept and function in the community. The program was very successful, as I'm sure considerable documentation will show. A study of the growth of the Walker Art Center will be, in a way, a study of the—of the vitality of the Federal Art Project community art center program.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Because it was a direct outgrowth. Gradually, the Walker Art Center, of course, became quite prosperous because the Walker family finally had to—legally, had to give the T. B. Walker Foundation its just due, one-sixth of the estate. Which I have no specific figures, but I would guess that in—by 1950 or 1955 could be valued at somewhere in excess of $100 million. And—so that the Walker Art Center ultimately, after WPA had ceased and so forth and so on, with—even without the substantial amount of money contributed by the community, became a quite well-endowed institution through the T. B. Walker Foundation. And today, I would say that it's one of the—one of the well-endowed and quite vigorous and well-run small museums in the United States. And not so small, I guess.
[00:35:18]
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: When you first set up the WPA art center there at the Walker Art Center, did you bring people from New York and Washington with you for the staff, or did you employ people who were there locally?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: I was fortunate in being able to employ a good many local people. And some of the people that—whose names should be mentioned, and some of them may be—can be interviewed about those days. Mac Le Sueur, M-A-C capital-L-E-capital-S-U-E-U-R, Mac LeSueur. That name LeSueur is a—is a rather famous name up around Minnesota. There's a town called Le Sueur. Was one of the prominent artists. A very good artist, strong painter, and served as the director of the school. Clement Haupers, H-A-U-P-E-R-S. If Clem is still around, and he should be, somebody should talk to Clem. Clem was the state director of the Minnesota Project, and would have a great deal of information about the early days of the period.
A man who could speak quite knowingly about the Federal Art Project in Minnesota is the current vice president of the United States, Hubert Humphrey. Hubert was assistant state director, kind of, of the—during WPA days. [Coughs.] And one of Hubert's assignments was to keep Dan Defenbacher in line. And he will remember this very distinctly. Because, many times, he had to call me over to his office in St. Paul and talk to me about how loosely I was handling the [laughs]—the WPA operation.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: He was assistant director of the whole WPA—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Of the whole WPA.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Not just the artists—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Yeah.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Not just the artist part. And so—and I'm sure that H. H. would be happy to talk to somebody about it. It's just the kind of thing that would give him a great deal of pleasure. Some people in Minneapolis that could be talked to, there should be some names that would be valuable. I'm just trying to pick those so that there's no wasted effort, and I'm having difficulty. For example, the man who was the president of the—of the Minnesota Arts Council. Oh, I must think of his name. He's a lawyer. Oh, isn't that—just on the tip of my tongue and it won't come to me.
Certainly, the early days of the Project could be covered—some information could be gained, in a kind of an outsider's point of view, from Russel Plimpton who was the director of the Minneapolis Art Institute. Where Russel is at the present moment I don't know. I understand that someone else is the director there now. But Russel would give another view—expert view, of the Project.
[00:40:20]
Syd Fossum, who I believe is out here in California somewhere, F-O-double-S-U-M. Always very active in the—in the Art Project in Minnesota during those years.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Was he an artist?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: He was an artist, right. He did that painting there, in 1947. John Sherman was the art critic on the Minneapolis paper. And John would be a person to talk with about the Project days. I would guess that John is still active in Minnesota—in Minneapolis.
Well, let's get some dinner and turn that thing off for a while. I'm—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Okay.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: —dried up. [Recorder stops, restarts.] Well, without going into enormous detail about the art center program, I think we may have—we may have covered it. You asked the question about the kinds of exhibitions, and I put something in about that.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: When we were talking earlier, before we began making the tape recording, you said something about the number of art centers that have survived the WPA period. And I thought that was very interesting—that have gone into permanent art center establishments in different communities across the United States. Do you have any kind of a rough idea of the ones that did keep going after the Project ended?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Well, why don't I go down the list here. Now, I'm afraid that my—that my answer to that won't be really definitive because my information is simply not up to date. I'm thinking about this and scanning the list. And I don't think that I'm in a position to give a very clear picture. This is something that would need a little research. Roughly, it looks to me like 50 percent of these are either still in existence as art centers under the more or less original name. Or a museum, or gallery, or something, and they exist in the community as a result of this activity, as a direct outgrowth. This would be true—I could name those that I'm reasonably certain of without any—without attempting to make any sequence, just some little pencil notes that I—that I made of listing the various centers. And they're not in any either geographic, or alphabetical, or date sequence. But I understand that the Nashville one is in existence. There is a Nashville Art Museum.
[00:45:07]
The one at Des Moines, Sioux City, Spokane, Sacramento, I believe you could say that the development—the growth of the Concord Gallery is a result, or certainly was contributed to by the art center program there. I understand the one at Salem is still operating in one way or another, isn't it?
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: I think so. Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Salem, Oregon.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Yes.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Both Tucson and Phoenix have—now have galleries that are a direct outgrowth of this program. The Florida ones, I don't know about. I don't know about them, any of them: Miami, Jacksonville, St. Petersburg, Tallahassee, Key West. I don't know. Little Rock, Arkansas. I understand that both Greensboro and Winston-Salem, North Carolina now have community programs, which I'm sure could be traced. Salt Lake City. Of course, the Denver one, the Denver Museum has grown tremendously. But that—you can't—it would have grown anyway. I mean that is not one that could have—I would say that we could—we could say that half of them—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Survived the—
D. S. DEFENBACHER: —survived—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: —in one form or another.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: You mentioned the traveling artists project or traveling artists program. That was the—a program of sending artists out from the east coast to go to the art centers to teach.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Yes. Go from the art centers to teach primarily. We interviewed artists who were willing to travel, either to take permanent jobs—more or less permanent jobs that is. In other words, to either head up the—these art centers or stay in the community more or less permanently to teach. Or to go for as short a time as one week or as long a time as two or three months.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: And we had a regular kind of interview program. In the interview program, we attempted to pick the kind of people who we thought would be reasonably happy out in the sticks, [laughs] I think. A lot of them wouldn't have been. They might have thought they would like a little trip, but when they got out there to Sioux City, Iowa or Butte, Montana, or someplace would have been very unhappy, you know? So, we tried to bypass those people. I did anyway. The other thing I looked for was the kind of artist who could communicate. There were a lot of them that would come by who were fine painters but had no capacity for communicating in any other way.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: And these people would have been hopelessly lost in that kind of a situation. So, there had to be process of selection. But I would say that it was a very vital part of the—of the program because it was—it became an interchange. The artist took things to the community, and, in return, the artist got a new experience and a new insight into the whole problem of art and the community. Of his role in society. And I think, on the whole, it was a very beneficial thing.
[00:50:05]
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: During the time that you were assistant director and were involved with the art center program, were there any great changes of policy that were made— of policies that were made? Or did you formulate the policy at the beginning of the program and have not many changes in the process of working it out?
D. S. DEFENBACHER: My recollection is that there were no major changes in policy. Now, that isn't to say that there weren't many changes in direction, many changes in the activities of the Project. But going back to what I said earlier, there was no need for change in policy because the basic policy was to let it grow.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: And was to encourage growth. And if some new direction sprung up and seemed to have vitality and wanted to go, our policy was to let it go. So, this was not a heavily—you see, it was not a heavily directed—Washington directed—
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: —Project. As I said before, Holger Cahill was not our leader [laughs] and made no pretense of doing this at all. It's my opinion that if it had been anything else than that, it would have been far, far less effective, or influential, in the growth of American art. It was that very policy of let it grow as it must grow that made it vital.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. That's probably why we describe it because the growth seemed so smooth, because it was a flexible kind of a policy.
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. I think so. It was always my impression that this was not true of the Treasury project. But maybe it couldn't have been true of the Treasury mural project, because there they were saddled with the responsibility for doing public murals in public buildings backed with public money. And public money, generally, given to them by politicians. So, they had a quite different problem. We, on the other hand, through the easel project, could allow a painter to paint in any way he damn chose, because it wasn't necessarily true that anybody'd ever see it. [Laughs.] [Coughs.]
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: —other than the people he wanted to see it.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Yeah. Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: The work did not necessarily have to end up in public view, whereas the Treasury mural project everything had to end up in public view.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Very true, mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: And I would guess that this is true. I would guess that a lot of the work, some of the—some very fine avant-garde work done in the Project was seen by very few people.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Because of its controversial nature, not because we were hiding it, at all. Because there was no conscious effort to hide anything of anybody's, ever. But if you have 100 artists in St. Paul, Minnesota painting pictures it's not necessary that—not necessarily going to happen that every painting by every artist is going to be on public view.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: We did have—another phase of the project was that we made the works turned in by the artists available to various public agencies if they wanted them, for hanging pictures and sculpture for public buildings. And a good many of the works of art ended up right there. And a lot of them, that's where they got destroyed, or lost, or misplaced, or stolen, or whatever happened to them, they disappeared. I'm sure this must have happened.
[00:55:15]
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: On the other hand, a lot of those paintings, now that there's some interest shown, may start reappearing on the dusty walls of some pretty old county courthouses, [laughs] you know? It could be. Or in old schools. I think the schools—a lot of the schools, took some of the work. Because we had this big exhibition program. There was an effort—and sometimes a difficult—it was difficult to do—but there was an effort to get the best work sent into Washington so that it could be incorporated in the nationwide exhibition program. Now, this wasn't always easy, because a lot of times the best artists kept their best work for themselves and gave only second-rate work to the Project. And you can see how this would happen.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: I've heard reports of that [laughs].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: Sure. They just gave—they turned the worst stuff in. And we knew that was happening and we would try to plead, and cajole, and wheedle, and sometimes use pressure to get good things, because we very much needed them for the good of the whole Project.
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
D. S. DEFENBACHER: And we weren't always very successful [laughs]. I don't know how prevalent that was, really. But I know that it was always a topic of conversation on both sides of the fence. The artist's side and the administration side. I think the—we pretty well covered the basic elements of the art center program. The thing that would be interesting to do would be to go back and try to evoke an accurate picture of some of the localities. And I'd hardly know where to begin with a thing like that. You're almost out of tape now anyway, aren't you?
MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[END OF TRACK AAA_defenb65_81_m.]
[END OF INTERVIEW.]
Transcript is available on the Archives of American Art's website.
This interview is open for research. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Daniel S. Defenbacher, 1965 April 16. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
