As a result, the Federal Art Project supported such iconic artists as Jackson Pollock before their work could earn them income.

[8] One particular success was the Milwaukee Handicraft Project, which started in 1935 as an experiment that employed 900 people who were classified as unemployable due to their age or disability.

They produced toys, dolls,[10] theatre costumes, quilts,[9] rugs, draperies, wall hangings, and furniture that were purchased by schools, hospitals,[2]: 164  and municipal organizations[11] for the cost of materials only.

[6] Notable artists include the following: The first federally sponsored community art center opened in December 1936 in Raleigh, North Carolina.

[155] As we study the drawings of the Index of American Design we realize that the hands that made the first two hundred years of this country's material culture expressed something more than untutored creative instinct and the rude vigor of a frontier civilization.

… The Index, in bringing together thousands of particulars from various sections of the country, tells the story of American hand skills and traces intelligible patterns within that story.The Index of American Design program of the Federal Art Project produced a pictorial survey of the crafts and decorative arts of the United States from the early colonial period to 1900.

Artists working for the Index produced nearly 18,000 meticulously faithful watercolor drawings,[2]: 226  documenting material culture by largely anonymous artisans.

[161]: ix  Objects surveyed ranged from furniture, silver, glass, stoneware and textiles to tavern signs, ships's figureheads, cigar-store figures, carousel horses, toys, tools and weather vanes.

"It helps to correct a bias which has tended to relegate the work of the craftsman and the folk artist to the subconscious of our history where it can be recovered only by digging.

It was founded by Romana Javitz, head of the Picture Collection of the New York Public Library, and textile designer Ruth Reeves.

[161]: xii  The work is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.[165] The Index employed an average of 300 artists during its six years in operation.

After he lost his left hand in an accident in 1934, he produced watercolor renderings for the Index, using magnifiers and drafting instruments for accuracy and precision.

Fossum eventually received an insurance settlement that made it possible for him to buy another farm and leave the Federal Art Project.