TIMES SQUARE — While few people long for the days of the Great Depression, a Times Square art exhibit is attempting to bring one aspect of that era back to life.
“The Work Office,” a weeklong series that began on Sunday, is putting struggling artists back to work in the style of the New Deal, hiring a dozen performers and craft makers to do their work in the open air of Times Square.
“We wanted to do something that was optimistic and generous,” explained Katarina Jernic, who organized the exhibit along with fellow artist Naomi Miller. “We’re trying to put something hopeful out there.”
The exhibit is centered around a fictitious employment agency — a table tent with a period-style “Making Work” sign — stationed across from the red steps near West 47th Street and Broadway.
The twelve artists — “employees” of the agency — are assigned to create their art in different spots around Times Square throughout the week. Projects include the screening of a documentary video about people who work in Times Square, a vocal performance directed at potted plants, and a “scaled-down” tickertape parade in which an artist will douse pedestrians with confetti from a Times Square window.
On Monday evening, painter Lori Nelson was hard at work, furnishing tourists with custom-made souvenir buttons meant to reflect their feelings at that precise moment in Times Square. Nearby, conceptual artist Veronica Dougherty was offering up her sewing skills at the “Mending and Encouragement Station.”
“Romantic problems are what people seem to need encouragement about,” Dougherty noted.
While the purpose of the original Depression Era public works projects was to provide people with gainful employment, Jernic said financial constraints would only allow the “The Work Office” project to “gesture” towards that idea.
Using funding from the Times Square Alliance and the Rockefeller Foundation, organizers will pay their artisan employees $23.50, which was once the weekly wage for employees of the Works Progress Administration’s (WPA) arts division.
Jernic chose not to frame the exhibit as a protest or a call for the government to dedicate more funding to the arts, but rather as an homage to a bygone attitude.
“The fact that art was seen as valuable in the same way as roads,” she said. “It seemed amazing to us that there was a time when that ever happened.”
“The Work Office” will run through Oct. 8. Visit the Times Square Alliance website for a complete schedule of projects and events.
