The Defense of Human Freedoms

At the time of its completion in 1942, Kindred McLeary’s The Defense of Human Freedoms was the largest painting ever commissioned by the Section of Fine Arts, the New Deal era program charged with acquiring the best possible artworks for public buildings. McLeary was an architecture professor at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh when his proposal was chosen from 200 anonymous submissions. His design focuses on five freedoms enjoyed by Americans. A series of panels on the lower register symbolize these freedoms with a related idyllic scene above. From left to right, they are: freedom of worship; freedom of assembly; freedom of the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness; freedom of the press; and freedom of speech. Above and flanking these freedoms are vivid, graphic depictions of their armed defense, painted during and reflecting the Second World War.

This 50-foot fresco was commissioned to adorn the entrance of the War Department Building, but within a decade that department moved to the Pentagon and changed its name to the Department of Defense. The State Department has occupied the building since the late 1940s, and the mural was temporarily covered from 1954 to 1977. It was conserved and restored in 2010.