Art Museum at Eden Park photograph

Dated ca. 1930-1939, this photograph shows the Art Museum in Eden Park in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Cincinnati Art Museum is located at 953 Eden Park Drive, in Eden Park. In 1880, Charles W. West of Cincinnati donated 150,000 dollars to the Cincinnati Museum Association to establish an art museum in the city. In 1886, the Cincinnati Art Museum opened, and became one of the leading art museums in the United States. The Romanesque Revival style building was designed by James W. McLaughlin. In 1881, the Cincinnati Museum Association convinced the McMicken School of Drawing and Design to relocate to the Cincinnati Art Museum. McMicken College later became the University of Cincinnati. The college agreed to turn over all operations of The School of Drawing and Design to the Cincinnati Museum Association. The school became known as the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Established in 1887, the academy has trained artists for more than a century. In 1998, the Art Academy of Cincinnati legally separated from the museum and became an independent college of art and design and has since moved to another location. By the early twenty-first century, the Cincinnati Art Museum contained works of art spanning more than five thousand years. Its holdings include works by Picasso, Matisse, and El Greco. The museum also owns a number of works by Frank Duveneck and other local artists. This photograph is one of the many visual materials collected for use in the Ohio Guide. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration by executive order to create jobs for the large numbers of unemployed laborers, as well as artists, musicians, actors, and writers. The Federal Arts Program, a sector of the Works Progress Administration, included the Federal Writers’ Project, one of the primary goals of which was to complete the America Guide series, a series of guidebooks for each state which included state history, art, architecture, music, literature, and points of interest to the major cities and tours throughout the state. Work on the Ohio Guide began in 1935 with the publication of several pamphlets and brochures. The Reorganization Act of 1939 consolidated the Works Progress Administration and other agencies into the Federal Works Administration, and the Federal Writers’ Project became the Federal Writers’ Project in Ohio. The final product was published in 1940 and went through several editions. The Ohio Guide Collection consists of 4,769 photographs collected for use in Ohio Guide and other publications of the Federal Writers’ Project in Ohio from 1935-1939