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Ep. 106: FDR and the Artsy Alphabet Soup of the WPA, with Troy Plumer

Episode
Episode #106
Featuring
Troy Plumer, master’s student in history
January 25, 2023
Topic
This episode brings us Troy Plumer, a Louisville, KY-based historian. Troy is an aficionado, though not a trained expert by his own admission, with the era around the Works Progress Administration (WPA) of the Great Depression and arts funding during that period.

WELCOME

Framing the Hammer episode 106 brings us Troy Plumer, a Louisville, KY-based master’s student in history. Troy is an aficionado, though not a trained expert by his own admission, with the era around the Works Progress Administration (WPA) of the Great Depression and arts funding during that period. Troy contributed a guest blog to the 4A Arts website that’s full of interesting historical tidbits and soaring rhetoric around how art lifts us all to new heights. This interview on Framing the Hammer reflects his poetic passion for art and history.

Troy’s knowledge of the era is dense and he enthusiastically references articles, objects, and people that are all worth their own podcasts. 

A 4A Arts quote icon, showing quotation marks

We could use art as positive propaganda - in the same way one looks at…songs when we feel low.

– Troy Plumer

Articles

Objects

  • Troy mentioned the Thomas Heart Benton murals scattered across the Indiana University campus in Bloomington, Indiana. Every few years, incoming classes protest the depiction of the KKK on the murals, prompting discussions of the appropriateness of Benton’s inclusion of the KKK members, whether the murals should be replaced or amended, and the depiction causes trauma. One quippy tidbit from Troy was his reiteration of a truism related to the study of history: “If you’re looking at history and you’re comfortable all the time, you’re probably not doing good history.”

People

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Prev: Ep. 105: ART AS AN ACT OF VANDALIZING NATURE with Ishkoten Dougi Ep. 107: AN INDIANAPOLIS JAZZ LUMINARY, with Larry H. Ridley

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