Government
New Canaan WPA Art Work To Get Prominent Position in Renovated Town Hall
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Calling the WPA paintings that long adorned the meeting room at Town Hall “important artifacts for the town,” New Canaan’s highest elected official said the art work will grace an open, second-story hallway in the atrium of the newly renovated and expanded facility. A pair of 78-by-115-inch paintings by Walter Bradnee Kirby that imagined aerial views of New Canaan in 1834 and 1934, respectively, will be showcased under the skylight of the addition at Town Hall, according to First Selectman Rob Mallozzi. Following discussions among members of the Town Hall Building Committee, those paintings—two of 20 WPA paintings that belong to the town, according to an inventory on file with the New Canaan Department of Public Works—will sit in shadow box-like cases that protrude about four inches from the wall. Mallozzi said he would like to see a protective plexi-glass or something similar around them, as well. “They are going to be the focal point of our art work in our Town Hall just as the Historical Society focuses on certain artifacts for the town on their display, the Town Hall wants to focus the public’s attention on these paintings that were part of the WPA New Canaan effort, and that has always been vision: To showcase them.”
The paintings were originally commissioned by the Works Progress Administration, or WPA, a Depression-era government program developed under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal initiative.