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"A New Deal for Art" examines the political and cultural significance of New Deal art and culture in the course of American history. The New Deal's heroic portraits of workers challenged the traditional role assigned to laborers and fostered the type of cross-class alliances that justified the creation and maintenance of a welfare state. The art projects furthermore nurtured a number of artists, such as Alice Neel and Richard Wright, who played crucial roles in the nation's post-WWII aesthetic revival. Finally, the art projects provided a blueprint for future federal patronage of the arts. The approaches to art that New Dealers envisioned---art as grandeur, art as enrichment, art as weapon, art as experience, and art as subversion---continue to describe how government-funded art serves society. Similarly, publicly funded art still both stirs controversy and also provides opportunities to make us more thoughtful, satisfied, and engaged citizens.