The stock market crashed on October 29, 1929, plunging the nation into “The Great Depression.” The Depression was further complicated by several years of drought. The Dust Bowl, encompassing eastern New Mexico, forced homesteaders to migrate.

After Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president in 1933, his administration quickly implemented large-scale economic and social relief programs. Those programs were expanded, adapted, and evolved over the course of the next decade to include infrastructure, agriculture, education, public art and architecture initiatives, and to become what is referred to as “The New Deal.”.

Between 1933-1943, various federal programs, including—perhaps most famously-- the Works Progress Administration (WPA), hired artists to create murals and artworks for public buildings, such as state houses, schools, and courthouses, trained and commissioned decorative furniture makers and tin workers to provide the interior details, and also funded preservation of culture and heritage, from traditional crafts to oral histories. Photographers, like Russell Lee, John Collier Jr., Dorothea Lang, and Jack Delano, were dispatched to capture scenes of everyday life in New Mexico's small towns.

More than 65 murals, 650 paintings, 10 sculptures, and a variety of other works of art artworks were created through the New Deal in New Mexico. Many of the artists who defined the “southwestern look" in the early 20th century were involved, like Peter Hurd, Gustave Baumann, Bert Phillips, and Ernest L. Blumenschein. The New Deal programs also boosted the careers of up-and-coming native artists in the 1930s, like Allan Houser, Pablita Velarde, and Maria Martinez.

Gallup has an impressive collection of New Deal creations, including architecture, hand-carved wood furniture, Spanish Colonial-style tinwork, prints, murals, western American paintings, and Native art. It is one of the largest collections in New Mexico. In total, there are over 130 objects housed in five different locations, not all of which are open to the public. However, the McKinley County Courthouse is a readily accessible opportunity to experience Gallup's New Deal history first-hand.

Located at 201 West Hill Avenue in downtown Gallup, The McKinley County Courthouse is eye-catching. Built in 1938, through the Public Works Administration (a New Deal program) and was designed in Spanish Pueblo Revival Style, the building is distinctly “New Mexico.” The facility is home to many pieces of New Deal art, including several murals, tile work, tin work, light fixtures, and furniture. One of the most ambitious murals, by artist Lloyd Moylan, depicts the history of the Gallup region. Moylan completed the painting in 1940. It was restored in 1991.

Filling the walls of the courtroom, the mural highlights different aspects of Gallup’s history and heritage. The painting begins by depicting dinosaurs and prehistoric life in one corner of the room. Waves of human arrival are depicted, from the Puebloans and Navajo to the Spanish Conquistadors and American soldiers. The mural comes to a conclusion with images of western migration; mountain men, miners, railroad workers, and homesteaders.

360 tour of the Lloyd Moylan Mural

Lloyd Moylan studied at the Minneapolis Art Institute and the the Art Students League in New York, prior to venturing to the Southwest. After the New Deal, he became the Curator of the Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art in Santa Fe. His work can be found across the state, including in the Museum of New Mexico. He died in Gallup in 1963.

A local non-profit arts council, gallupARTS, is working to restore the legacy of the New Deal in Gallup, unifying the collection on a website, and making it widely available as an artistic and historical resource. It received a $30,000 Public “Discovery” grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in 2018 to research and plan the Gallup New Deal Art website. In 2020, it received an additional $100K NEH grant to build prototype and, it is now working on a $400K NEH grant to build and launch the Gallup New Deal Art Virtual Museum in March 2025. The site will feature a variety of avenues of exploration of Gallup's New Deal art collection.