The WPA's mission was not simply to provide a place for artists to show their work or perform, but also to make available advice in arts management, grantsmanship, career development, and legal rights.
Denney launched the WPA with a grant from the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, a tiny[clarification needed] staff, a three-story building, and a lot of goodwill.
The WPA officially opened in April 1975 with a multidisciplinary program that included a broad survey of Washington area visual art.
At that time, one of WPA's mainstays for financial support, the National Endowment for the Arts, was beginning to eliminate funding for artists spaces.
Christopher French, who had joined the Board in the fall of 1994, was asked by the trustees to assume the position of Interim Director to address the financial and programmatic challenges.
[2] With increased financial pressures mounting, French renegotiated the terms of the WPA's lease on their flagship building on 7th Street NW and closed its doors.
Having put in motion what was considered the only option for the continuation of the WPA, French stepped down as interim director while remaining as chair of the board until January 1997.
Kuzma's term attempted to redirect the program to address Washington, D.C., as a unique context for international contemporary art projects.
[6] Under her leadership the WPA continued the growth and refocusing started by Kim Ward and conducted several key exhibitions[7][8][9] and moved to a larger, permanent space.
[13] When Alice Denney founded the WPA in 1975, she was lucky to snare a rundown building at 1227 G Street, NW, Washington, DC from the city's Redevelopment Land Agency.
Renovated on a shoestring budget, 1227 G Street included 5 galleries, a film screening room, a performing arts space, and offices.
Then director Al Nodal supervised WPA's move to the Jenifer Building in the 400 block of 7th Street, NW, Washington DC.
In December 1988, the WPA was able to move back into its improved 11,000 sq ft (1,000 m2) space, all because of an aggressive fundraising campaign led by Reynolds.
In 1985, “Art in Washington and Its Afro-American Presence: 1940-1970,” featured DC resident artists Elizabeth Catlett, David Driskell, Lois Mailou Jones, James A. Porter, and Alma Thomas.
[15][16] In June 1989, the Corcoran Gallery of Art canceled The Perfect Moment: Robert Mapplethorpe Photographs, which included (among other things) sexually explicit images involving gay BDSM, and two photos of children with exposed genitals.
[26] In the summer of 2005 the WPA\C organized one of its largest membership shows ever at the seven spaces that made up the Warehouse Galleries, Theater and Cafe complex on 7th Street, NW in Washington, D.C.
Titled and curated by F. Lennox Campello,[27] "Seven",[28] the show included works by Sam Gilliam, Mark Jenkins, Frank Warren, Tim Tate, Chan Chao, and many other well-known DC area member artists.