In exchange, they received a generous salary, benefits, and one day per week to work in their studio or on independent creative projects.
Signed into law by Richard Nixon in December 1973, it started modestly but expanded rapidly, reaching a peak budget of $12 billion in the late 1970s, during the Jimmy Carter administration.
One of the CETA funding categories, Title VI, provided for "cyclically unemployed" professionals, which included artists (visual, performing and literary).
Outside of these projects, a number of artists and arts administrators were hired with CETA funding through direct assignment of positions by state and municipal governments.
Two hundred of these artists were part of programs administered by four cultural nonprofits: Hospital Audiences, La Mama ETC, the American Jewish Congress and the Theater for the Forgotten.
To be eligible, they had to demonstrate both their accomplishment as artists (through reviews by professional panels) and the fact that they had received virtually no income in the previous year.
One of the most visible figures was the city's relatively new commissioner of cultural affairs, Henry Geldzahler (appointed by mayor Ed Koch in 1977).
Among them: sculptors Ursula von Rydingsvard, Christy Rupp[11] and James Biederman;[12] painters Hunt Slonem and Willie Birch; photographic artist Dawoud Bey;[13] filmmaker and TV producer Marc Levin; poets Bob Holman and Pedro Pietri; dancers Martha Bowers and Vic Stornant.
[18] In 2017, New York City recognized CETA's impact on the arts when it highlighted the program as a case study in Mayor Bill de Blasio's Cultural Plan, CreateNYC.