WPA Art Inventory

Treadwell, Grace A. (1893-1989)
Grace Treadwell was born in 1893 in West Chop, Massachusetts. She studied art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Art Students’ League in New York, and the Grand Chaumiere in Paris. She was a member of the Pen and Brush Club of New York City and the National Association of Women Artists (NAWA). She served as president of the latter from 1946-1949. The years that she worked for the Federal Arts Project are unknown as is the art produced. The Connecticut State Library owns one of her WPA paintings.

 In 1947, as president of NAWA, Treadwell was involved in a cause celeb involving an “indecent” sculpture. Just before the NAWA exhibition was to open at the National Academy of Design in New York, Treadwell announced that she had ordered the prize winning aluminum sculpture, Lovers, removed from the exhibit. She gave as her reason that the director of the Academy had heard complaints that the work was “indecent.” Treadwell further justified her action by saying that she had removed one piece in order to prevent the Academy from closing the exhibit. Of course, members of the Association came to the aid of the sculptor, Mitzi Solomon (later Mitzi Solomon Cunliffe). Solomon herself resigned and others followed. Treadwell had to defend her actions before a meeting of NAWA. The director of the Academy issued a statement disavowing any attempt by his organization to censor the exhibit. Eventually all agreed that the sculpture should be returned, Solomon and the others rejoined NAWA, and Treadwell stayed on until the end of her term in 1949. Treadwell died in 1989.

 Sources: Who Was Who in American Art [1985], p. 629; Social Security Death Index; New York Times: Howard Devree, A Gallery-Goer’s Week,” May 7, 1933; “In the New York Area,” September 22, 1935; “Show in Brooklyn of Humor in Art,” November 22, 1935; “Art Exhibit Opens Today,” November 15, 1942; “Art by Palencia To Be Displayed,” March 30, 1944; “53^rd Show Opened by Women Artists,” April 24, 1945; “Pen and Brush Winners,” January 7, 1946; “Allenbrook Painting Will Be Shown Here,” March 15, 1946; Sanka Knox,  “Lovers, Prize Winning Sculpture, Barred From Academy Art Show,” April 26, 1947; “3D Sculptor Quits Over Banned Work,” April 28, 1947; “Ban on Sculpture Comes Up Tonight,” April 30, 1947; “Women Artists End Lovers Statue Row,” May 1, 1947; Edward Alden Jewell, “Art and Censorship,” May 4, 1947; “Unloved Lovers,” Time Magazine, May 5, 1947, at www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,793667,00.html, “17 Art Prizes Given,” September 27, 1949; “263 Works of Art Seen in Exhibition,” November 11, 1950; “Women Show Art in Many Mediums,” January 31, 1953; “Variety of Styles and Displays at Galleries,” March 11, 1956; “Abbott Treadwell Jr.,” November 25, 1960.

Sloane, Thomas O’Connor (1912-2003?)
Thomas O’Connor Sloane worked for the WPA Federal Arts Project taking photographs of historic Connecticut interiors. A gum print that he created was shown at the Connecticut Tercentenary exhibition in New Haven. The above birth and death dates are from the Social Security Death Index for a Thomas O. Sloane III who lived in Westport, Connecticut at the time of his death. Other particulars about his life are unknown.

Source: WPA Photographs.

Russo, Michele (1909-2004)
Michele Russo was born in Waterbury, Connecticut in 1909. He grew up in the Italian American section of the city and later in life stated that he stood out as being different because he was interested in art and literature. Several tutors throughout his youth encouraged him to continue his interest in both. When he was five, he went to Italy with his mother and three younger sisters. With the outbreak of World War I, Italy detained them until after the Armistice was signed ending the conflict in 1918. Ten years old on his return to Waterbury, Russo had learned to speak and live like an Italian and to absorb new cultural influences. He could not attend a public school because he was an immigrant, but a priest named Giulo Perillo became his tutor. He attended a very “progressive” public school and took art classes. In 1930 he entered the Yale Fine Arts School and considered himself different, since most of the students were from wealthy families. He would later say that the school demanded conformity and that he spent time in the library looking at books on art. During the Great Depression Russo, who had developed a social consciousness for the under-dog in Waterbury, became active in radical politics that were anti-war and anti-Fascist. He graduated in 1934 and the next year wed another artist, Sally Haley. In 1936 the couple moved to Colorado Springs. Russo had obtained a fellowship to the Colorado Springs Art Center, and there he took classes taught by Boardman Robinson and George Biddle. When the Russos returned to New Haven, he began working for the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) and the WPA’s Federal Arts Project (FAP). He painted murals at the Nathan Hale High School in Hamden under the PWAP and, with Basillio Yurchenko, another social activist he had met at Yale, he painted the daring Columbus mural at the Christopher Columbus School in New Haven. During World War II he worked in a factory producing instruments for planes and at a chemical lab doing experiments. In 1947 Michele and Sally moved to Portland, Oregon. He taught at the Portland Museum Art School, now called The Pacific Northwest College of Art, until 1974. He was prominent in Oregon for bringing abstract art to the region. Russo died in 2004.

 Sources: WPA Photograph of the Columbus mural, AskART, Social Security Death Index, “Oral History Interview with Michele Russo,” 1983 August 29, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution at www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/russ83.htm.

Milici, Raymond (1914-1998)
Little is known about Raymond Milici. He was born in 1914 in New Haven, Connecticut and was a brother of Salvatore Milici. While working in the National Youth Administration, he was assigned to the Federal Arts Project for a few months. He worked with clay. Milici died in New Haven in 1998.

Sources: WPA time card; Social Security Death Index; Obituary, New Haven Register, September 4, 1998.

Gerbi, Enrico (?)
All that is known about Enrico Gerbi is a time card dated January 4, 1936. He finished a large drawing which may have been a tracing for a mural and a “portrayal” of the sculpture Dignity.