From 1933 to 1935, the U.S. Treasury Department established four art projects to employ American artists and bring art into its government buildings, especially its post offices. The second and most ambitious of these projects would take hundreds of artists, including Indian artists Stephen Mopope and Acee Blue Eagle, and place their work before an audience of citizens, many of whom had never before seen an original painting or sculpture.₂

Biddle, a student of Mary Cassatt, and renowned Mexican artist Diego Rivera had similar social consciousness as his mentors, profoundly inspired by the government‐funded, 1920s‐era Mexican public mural project depicting the social ideals of the Mexican Revolution.₃

Roosevelt put Biddle in touch with Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence W. Robert, under whose auspices fell all federal buildings. By June Biddle had garnered the support of Eleanor Roosevelt and several members of FDR's cabinet. Meanwhile, Robert had sought advice from a fellow Treasury Department official named Edward Bruce. It was to be a serendipitous conversation; no other person but Bruce could have been more suited to putting Biddle's idea into action.₄ 

'Ned' Bruce, a brilliant lawyer and businessman, was also a working artist with successful exhibits, showings and sales of his work. Bruce was the perfect government arts patron and bureaucratic insider with an artist's spirit. Olin Dows, who assisted him in the Section, attributed Bruce's success to the fact that he "would talk to {both politicians and artists} in their own language" and so inspired their confidence in what he was trying to do.₅ After a meeting with an advisory committee of museum directors, the Public Works Art Project (PWAP) was established in December of 1933, with Bruce overseeing a decentralized program of 16 regional divisions each with a Treasury Paymaster and a volunteer committee of museum curators, painters, and others interested in the arts.₆

Over the PWAP's short life, 3,750 paid artists created 15,663 pieces of art in a mere 4.5 months of existence. It was acknowledged at the time that the government 'had received its money's worth.' The PWAP was dissolved after six months and superceded by the new Department of the Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture, known simply as 'The Section' and led by Bruce.₇

The themes of the murals covered the vast historical expanse of the country from the Native cultures, European conquerors, and westward expansion to the power of industry in American life. Emphasizing the strength of the individual in the midst of a turbine‐powered society was a popular theme, as were agriculture, citizen's daily lives, and regional historical tableaux. The agricultural scenes tried to preserve the older ways, the industrial scenes often concentrate on crash labor intensive, or high skilled work.₁₃

The Section's program was cut short after Pearl Harbor when budgets for art simply could not be justified in the face of a war effort.₁₄ Nevertheless, the importance and effect of this ambitious and wide‐reaching, federally‐funded post office art initiative cannot be underestimated. Pleasant Hill, Missouri Postmaster Basil Jones wrote to Bruce at the time: "In behalf of many smaller cities, wholly without objects of art , as ours was, may I beseech you and the Treasury to give them some art, more of it, whenever you find it possible to do so. How can a finished citizen be made in an artless town."₁₅

While not every mural satisfied the standards of the best museums, the fact that the government made such a monumental effort to unify and inspire its people through a national public arts project made the exhaustive work of Bruce and his fellows worthwhile. 'However short of its goal fell the Section's achievements', putting some art in a thousand towns warranted all its efforts.₁₆