In 1973, in the face of an economic downturn, paired with high inflation, the federal Comprehensive Training and Employment Act (CETA) received bipartisan support and was signed into law. Designed for general training and employment, CETA was not initially envisioned as a source of jobs for artists. However, soon after its implementation, John Kreidler, then an intern at the San Francisco Arts Commission, along with Ruth Asawa, from the Alvarado Arts Workshop, developed the first CETA artist program. Their example became the model for other similar projects, called CETA Employment of Artists, in cities across the United States, such as Chicago, Houston, Minneapolis, New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., leading to the funding of more than 20,000 arts sector jobs during its existence.

For ten years, Virginia Maksymowicz and Blaise Tobia, with a small group of artists, who were all part of the Cultural Council Foundation CETA Artists Project in New York City, have, through their determined research, presentations, and collective actions, worked to elevate the knowledge and understanding of CETA’s Employment of Artists (1974–1981).
The work of the CETA Arts Legacy Project has raised public awareness and expanded the historical record of the impacts of the CETA Employment of Artists. As well, the Legacy Project has brought about a greater appreciation of CETA’s nationwide support of artist employment. Part of their work is the creation of a growing, publicly available archive supported by Franklin & Marshall College. The archive includes documentation, testimonials, presentation papers, published articles, and essays on CETA’s support of the arts nationally, but especially the CETA Artist Project (NYC). The purpose of the archive is to collect, promote, and preserve the history of CETA’s crucial role in the success of artists; to make the programs accomplishments more widely known; to demonstrate the relevance of CETA as a model for cultural development; and to be a source for further research and publication.

Although CETA was responsible for the largest federally funded artists employment project since the Works Projects Administration (1935-1943), it has essentially been forgotten. While there have been books published about the larger CETA program, to date, not one comprehensive book has been published specifically about CETA Employment of Artists. The work of The CETA Arts Legacy Project underscores the critical need for more focused scholarship on this life changing and culture generating project; its gathered documentation moreover demonstrates the historical need for a first book about the CETA’s role in the arts.

We seek contributions from eight to ten authors, who have previously written about, are engaged in current research, or who were artists or arts administrators employed by the CETA Artists Project, for a book about the history, impact, and continuing potential of this unique program. We also seek testimonials from artists about their experience working for the CETA Artists Project; and CETA materials to add to the archive, including maps, documentation of milestones, data sets, images and local histories.
Go here for more information about CETA and The CETA Arts Legacy Project.
This book will include historical analysis, case studies and the cultural impact of CETA on the arts.

Table of contents (to date)
• “Preface” and “Afterward” by Julia Marsh
• “Forward” by Lucy Lippard
• “Introduction” by Maksymowicz and Tobia
We seek further contributions that address the following:
• the overlap between content and regional perspectives
• case studies of communities that took up CETA funding
• community art made under CETA auspices
• analysis of government funding of the arts and CETA
• cost/benefit analysis for women artist
• impact of CETA on feminism
• effect of CETA on art and culture
• influence of CETA on equality and civil rights for artists of color
• CETA benefits for major and/or minor arts organizations
• CETA and the work of specific artists
• CETA beyond the visual: literary arts, dance, music, theater, poetry, etc.
• Speculative analysis of how a CETA program would elevate US Artists today

Please send .pdfs of your 100-300 word proposal, two samples of your writing, your CV, and bio to Julia Marsh at julia.e.marsh@gmail.com. You can also direct questions to this address. We encourage authors with a diversity of experience and background to submit proposals.

Deadline for proposals January 15, 2024
We are proposing this book to academic presses and are seeking grant funding. It is our hope to provide honorariums to all contributors. Authors will receive publishing credit and desk copies of the book (quantity TBD).

THE TEAM:
Virginia Maksymowicz (b. 1952), Professor Emerita of Art, Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, earned a BA in fine arts from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York (1973) and an MFA in visual arts from the University of California, San Diego (1977). She worked for the Cultural Council Foundation’s CETA Artists Project (1978-79.) She has had solo exhibitions at Rowan University’s High Street Gallery (New Jersey), METHOD (Seattle), SACI (Florence), the Elizabeth Foundation (NYC), the Michener Art Museum (Pennsylvania) and the Delaware Contemporary. Her work has been exhibited in group shows at the Franklin Furnace, Alternative Museum, the Elizabeth Foundation and Grey Gallery (all NYC); the Noyes Museum (New Jersey), Cornell University (Ithaca) and the Torpedo Factory (Virginia). She received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in sculpture in 1984. Her work has been reviewed in Sculpture Magazine, The New York Times, The New Art Examiner and The Philadelphia Inquirer; her series, The History of Art, appears on the cover of The Female Body (University of Michigan Press). She has been in residence at the American Academy in Rome, the Powel House Museum in Philadelphia, and at the Vermont Studio Center.

Julia Marsh (b. 1965) earned an MA (2007) in visual and critical studies from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago; an MFA (1997) in studio art from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a BFA (1992) in printmaking and book arts at the Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of Art. She is an artist, curator, editor, and writer, who lives in Philadelphia, PA. Her artworks have explored the impacts of trauma through documenting events in places she has lived in drawings built from patterns and architectural renderings. She has shown her work nationally and internationally. In 2023, her work The Breach: Maplehurst Lane, was included in Art of the State, at The State Museum of Pennsylvania, and was awarded third place in works on paper. More recently, her work was selected for Small Works at Harper College, opening this September. Her writings on art, feminism, and technology have been featured in publications, such as SPACE, Art in Culture, New Art Examiner, Artblog, and Public Art Dialog. Her curatorial efforts have focused on underrepresented artists and exploring the untold stories of museum objects.

Blaise Tobia (b. 1953), Professor Emeritus of Art, Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, earned a BA in fine arts from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York (1974) and an MFA in visual arts from the University of California, San Diego (1977). In 1978, he was one of the three photographers in the documentation unit of the NYC Cultural Council Foundation CETA Arts Project. His fine-art photographic work concentrates on global material culture, with the images presented via pairings, virtual collages, and text-image combinations, often in book form. His special interest in Italian history, language and culture is evidenced in his book, Castle of Eufemio (2007), which documents a small Sicilian town, and in his photographic series, The Disappearance of Italy. He is an active writer and researcher of text-image works and of non-traditional forms of presentation. Images from his work as a photographer for the CCF CETA Artists Project have appeared in a variety of magazine and newspaper articles, as well as the CreateNYC cultural plan and the Getty’s Blondell Cummings: Dance as Moving Pictures. Two of his CETA photos documenting the work of Ellsworth Ausby are included in the Whitney Museum’s exhibition “Edges of Ailey.” He has had one-person exhibitions at Viewpoint (Sacramento), ArtSpace NC (Raleigh), Hillyer Art Center (Washington DC), the University of the Arts (Philadelphia), the Delaware Contemporary, and O.K. Harris Works of Art (NYC), with group shows at Kunsthaus Dahlemm (Berlin), the Arsenale Institute (Venice), the Central Academy of Fine Art (Beijing), City Lore and Cuchifritos galleries (NYC), and the Abington Art Center and the Painted Bride (Philadelphia). He has been in residence at the American Academy in Rome and at the Vermont Studio Center.