New Deal Programs: Selected Library of Congress Resources

Materials in the Collections of the Music Division

Online Materials | Special Collections

The Music Division holds extensive collections of materials from both the Federal Music Project and the Federal Theatre Project.

Online Materials

The New Deal Stage: Selections from the Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939
The Federal Theatre Project was one of five arts-related projects established during the first term of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt under the Works Progress Administration (WPA). This online presentation includes images of items selected from the Federal Theatre Project Collection at the Library of Congress. More...

Special Collections

Library of Congress

The U.S. Work Projects Administration Federal Music Project
The Library's collection consists of agency reports, programs, catalogs, index cards, lists, correspondence, questionnaires, clippings, some music scores and parts, a few writings, and the papers of George Allen Foster, regional director for New York and New England. A more extensive description of the collection is available from the collection's [finding aid].

Federal Theatre Project Collection
The Library's collection consists of correspondence, memoranda, play and radio scripts, reports, research studies, manuals, publications, bulletins, forms, lists, newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, charts, costume and set designs, blue-prints, posters, addressograph plates, photographs, negatives, slides, playbills, and other records documenting the role of the Federal Theatre Project in laying the groundwork during the New Deal years for much innovation in the theater. A more extensive description of the collection is available from the collection's finding aid.

External Collections

Many related administrative records from these projects may be found in the National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the Work Projects Administration [WPA] (Record Group 69), Washington, DC.