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Conservation - Western Lands and Symbols of the Interior Department by Louis Bouché
Photo CreditGSA\Kristen Fusselle
Conservation - Western Lands and Symbols of the Interior Department
Photo CreditGSA\Kristen Fusselle

Conservation - Western Lands and Symbols of the Interior Department

Artist
Year1938
Classification painting
Medium oil on canvas
Dimensions23' 10" x 11' 8"
Credits New Deal Art Program
Location

  • Conservation – Western Lands and Symbols of the Interior Department was commissioned during the New Deal by the Department of the Treasury’s Section of Fine Arts.  In 1938, the Section held an open competition to commission a painting spanning the backdrop of the auditorium stage of the Department of the Interior’s new headquarters building.  Louis Bouché, an artist and interior designer, was chosen over three hundred competing artists to paint this three-part mural. 

    Bouché’s mural, which comprises a movable central panel flanked by two fixed wings, speaks to the origins of the land conservation movement in the United States.  The low, far-stretching landscape in the Far West is bisected by a motorway, upon which two automobiles are visible in the distance.  A Native American man and a white man survey the view from the foreground of the left panel.  Various flora and fauna populate the rest of the scene.

    Along the bottom of the mural’s central panel are eight predella vignettes that pay homage to specific methods of land conservation.  These conservation activities reference the various Bureaus of the Interior Department.  They are, from left to right: General Land Office (Field Surveying); Bureau of Reclamation (Irrigation, with a view of Boulder Dam); Geological Survey (Topographic Maps); Division of Territories and Island Possessions (Tropical Landscape); Bureau of Indian Affairs (Wigwams); Office of Education (Vocational Education); National Park Service (Western Flora); and Bureau of Mines (Electric Drill).