Entomology and the WPA Federal Art Project in Kansas: Artists Drawn to Science

Abstract

Faculty members from the Department of Entomology at Kansas State College (now Kansas State University) in Manhattan received support (ca. 1940–43) from a somewhat unusual source to complete a work of practical utility describing the region's insect fauna. Their patron was none other than the Federal Art Project (FAP) of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) - the largest agencies of their kind that provided employment relief during the Great Depression under President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policies. More than a dozen and a half regional artists were recruited and trained in the exacting techniques of scientific illustration, for which stringent standards of performance were uniformly applied. Through their efforts, more than a hundred pen-and-ink habitus drawings were prepared for the identification manual, Insects in Kansas (1943), published by the Kansas State Board of Agriculture. Seemingly exploiting an opportunity provided by the WPA/FAP to demonstrate an integration of “the arts in gen...