As Depression-era art centered on the heroic male figures rebuilding America, Paul Cadmus infused his public work with overt expressions of gay desire.

Before many Americans had ever seen an abstract painting, the WPA commissioned artists to create large, avant-garde murals—for installation in a public housing project.

Conspicuous consumption plummeted during the Great Depression, but the fantasy of big spending remains a part of the American dream.

The relentless churn of daily news can feel like a burden—especially for those who don’t see themselves represented in it.

Handmade dolls embodied marginalized workers’ desire for autonomy—and, now, the plight of children at the United States’ southern border.

Telling, and preserving, the stories that reveal what it’s really like to be black in America—from Ralph Ellison’s classic novel to now.

During the Depression, the government encouraged men to get back to work—and women to stay home.

The most iconic image from the Great Depression centers on rural poverty—but then, as now, the misery of homelessness was compounded in America’s cities.

Heartbreak defines the human experience. And nothing can break your heart like your own country.

Finding moments of beauty and elegance in industrial labor.

A local beauty pageant can be about more than just looks. It can also reveal how a community wants to be seen.

A summer of activism in Chicago reminds us that in order for history to be taught, it must first be recorded.

Harnessing the power of the humble hole punch, to either create narratives or deflate them.

Gordon Parks and the pursuit of happiness as a black American.

Updating the iconic posters of the Works Progress Administration.

During the New Deal, Southwest DC was razed to create a “model city” for federal workers. Now the area is being redeveloped again, this time into a gentrified urban playground.

Public art has the power to show us what we want to see—or reveal what we deserve.

A photograph of a home speaks volumes about the inhabitant, even when they’re not included in the shot.

A visit to the juke joints in the Florida Everglades where migrant laborers could go to relax.

During the Depression, the federal government urged Americans to visit the country’s natural wonders.

Wendy Red Star brings illustrations from the Denver Art Museum’s card catalog to the Crow Nation’s annual gathering.

Shane Lavalette follows the refugees who have made their home in the whitest state in the nation.

Documenting a life of a neighborhood means covering street life in all of its joy and pain.

The history of Texas’s power struggle with water.

Snapshots of a life after slavery, and an imagining of a world without bondage.

The faces and places of a forgotten swath of American life.

During the Depression, women were advised to “sing for their supper” as a way to survive hard times.

Manual labor can be hard and exhausting, practical and poetic.

Public murals are contested spaces, where retellings of history and new visions of the future fight for prominence.

Tennessee’s once-segregated parks turn over a new leaf.

Mark Steinmetz drives the streets of the city’s fast-growing urban sprawl.

Fulfilling the American dream of standing under bright lights while your friends and neighbors applaud.

Beloved, abandoned, then beloved once more, a Brooklyn pool transforms alongside its neighborhood.

Dust Bowl migrants had to pull up roots. Native Hawaiians are strengthening theirs.

Leanne Shapton reconsiders motherhood after seeing a photograph of children asleep during a square dance.

A 20th-century mural for a women’s prison meets 21st-century inequality.