{"id":276422,"date":"2026-09-01T10:18:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T10:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/276422\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T10:18:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T10:18:11","slug":"philly-city-hall-remembers-an-federal-act-that-put-artists-to-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/276422\/","title":{"rendered":"Philly City Hall remembers an federal act that put artists to work"},"content":{"rendered":"

A temp agency for artists<\/p>\n

The exhibit was created by Philadelphia artists Blaise Tobia and Virginia Maksymowicz. In the 1970s, the married couple was living in New York City, employed as artists with CETA via the city\u2019s Cultural Council Foundation.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was almost like working for a secretarial temp agency,\u201d Maksymowicz said. \u201cSomebody would request from the Cultural Council Foundation an artist. \u2018Hey, our community center wants to do a ceramic mural,\u2019 or, \u2018Hey, we need someone to work with kids on an after-school project.\u2019\u201d
\n\"VirginiaArtists Virginia Maksymowicz and Blaise Tobia talk about their experiences working through the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) in New York City in the 1970s. They are the curators of \u201dA Federal Job in the Arts,\u201d an exhibit in the office of Creative Philadelphia at City Hall. (Emma Lee\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

She said CETA was not a project grant or an artist fellowship, but a job.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got two weeks vacation, we got health insurance, and when the job ended, they taught us how to apply for unemployment insurance,\u201d Maksymowicz said. \u201cArtists don\u2019t understand sometimes: They might have a one-year teaching job some place. The job ends and they don\u2019t apply for unemployment insurance. We were taught by CETA that that money\u2019s being taken out of your paycheck. You\u2019re eligible. There is a different mindset when something is a job. You know what\u2019s owed to you.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"VirginiaVirginia Maksymowicz is shown working at the New York Botanical Garden in 1978, drawing their historic microscope collection. (Photo by Blaise Tobia for the CCF CETA Artists Project \u00a91978)<\/p>\n

Maksymowicz and Tobia are coordinators of the CETA Arts Legacy Project<\/a>, having spent the last 15 years hunting in archives and libraries to piece together where CETA money went, who benefitted and what came of it. Maksymowicz said no comprehensive documentation has ever been made of CETA.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cAs young artists in New York and the CETA program, we knew what was going on in New York, but we had no idea what was going on all across the country,\u201d she said. \u201cBit by bit we started tracking down people.\u201d
\n\"BlaiseBlaise Tobia in his darkroom in Tribeca in 1978. (Photo by George Malave for the CCF CETA Artists Project \u00a91978)\n<\/p>\n

\u201cA Federal Job in the Arts\u201d is one of three similar exhibitions running back-to-back in three cities. The Delaware Art Museum recently closed \u201cCitizen Artist,\u201d<\/a> which focused on CETA and its 1930s predecessor \u2014 the Works Progress Administration of the New Deal.\n<\/p>\n

Also running is \u201cART\/WORK: The Practice and Politics of CETA and the Arts\u201d<\/a> at the James Gallery of the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.
\n\"VirginiaVirginia Maksymowicz and another CETA artist, Richard Nicksic, in 1978 working at what would become the Brooklyn Arts and Culture Association\u2019s new BACA Downtown Center. (Photo by Blaise Tobia for the CCF CETA Artists Project \u00a91978)\n<\/p>\n

Unlike the WPA, which funded the creation of murals, photographs, graphics and writings, CETA did not target the creation of artwork. Rather, it generated employment.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThe American public was very familiar with the art projects of the New Deal,\u201d Tobia said. \u201cCETA didn\u2019t do anything like that, which is one of the reasons it\u2019s a whole lot less well-known.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A temp agency for artists The exhibit was created by Philadelphia artists Blaise Tobia and Virginia Maksymowicz. In…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,5550,71,70],"class_list":["post-276422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-city-hall","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}