Its primary mission was the embellishment of public buildings — including many United States post offices — through site-specific murals and sculptures commissioned on a competitive basis.

Commissioned artists were provided with the guidelines and themes for each project, and scenes of local interest and events were generally represented.

In existence during the Great Depression in the United States, the Section of Painting and Sculpture was a public-art program administered by the Procurement Division of the Treasury Department as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.

Artworks created under the Section of Fine Arts were site-specific murals and sculptures for newly constructed federal buildings and post offices.

[6] Unlike the other New Deal art programs, the Section awarded commissions through competitions and paid artists a lump sum for their work.

Some local communities rejected the approved designs, and the artists would work to respond to these concerns and save their commissions.

For example, the now-William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building, constructed in the early 1930s as the headquarters for the U.S. Post Office Department and one of the first buildings to receive works of art under this program, contains 25 murals created with support from the Section intended to depict the history of mail delivery and the settlement of the American West.