page_title: Lumen Martin Winter
section_title: WPA Commissions
hierarchical_section_title: Lumen Martin Winter / Biography / WPA Commissions
caption_attribution_description: English: Cannes, from the deck of the SS Constitution, watercolor, 1955. The Long Island Museum Collection
context_page_description: Lumen Martin Winter was a celebrated American public artist whose skills in sculpture, paintings, and works on paper, were widely known during his lifetime. His ability to master a wide range of media – including oil paint, watercolor, marble, and wood – helped Winter maintain his ideology of not reconciling to a single artistic approach. Winter successfully completed over 50 public art projects, with highlights including work at the AFL-CIO building in Washington, DC, the United States Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel in Colorado Springs, CO, and the United Nations General Assembly Building in New York, NY. The Long Island Museum of American Art, History, and Carriages is the largest repository of Winter's work.
context_section_description: Some of his early projects were commissioned through President Roosevelt's New Deal initiative under the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the 1930s and 40s. Under the WPA, Winter created post office murals in Fremont, Michigan; Hutchinson, Kansas; and St. Louis, Missouri. 
  His mural created to decorate the historic Gwen B. Giles Station post office in St. Louis depicts the city's Old Levee and Market. The lively scene depicts a family trying to get out of the way of a stagecoach with unruly horses while two nearby men stand against a tree whose marker indicates Boone’ Lick Trail that ran west from St. Louis to Arrow Rock. As this mural indicates, WPA commissions were based on local history themes that provided readable guides to each state and sought to instill local pride amid the atmosphere of despair caused by the Great Depression.
caption: Cannes, from the deck of the SS Constitution, watercolor, 1955. The Long Island Museum Collection
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