Singing Love Songs

Singing Love Songs is a mural by Chiricahua Apache artist Allan Houser that stretches across the north wall of the eighth-floor penthouse at the Department of the Interior building. In the painting, two young men on horseback sing songs for a young maiden on the other side of an archway. Her riding partner and little sister tease her with smiles on their faces. When designing this mural, Houser described how “in the early days of the tribe, when a boy was interested in a certain girl, he would watch for the girl leaving camp, and at the first chance he would saddle up his pony and follow.” In his murals, Houser often included notes of humor. For instance, the two men riding on a horse and a donkey that look longingly at a water fountain mounted on the wall.

Allan Houser, or Haozous, was commissioned in 1939 to create a series of murals at the new Department of the Interior building in Washington, D.C. He was one of four Native American artists who painted 2,200 feet of murals for the penthouse, which served as the employee lounge. Zia Pueblo artist Velino Herrera painted the north corridor, and Potawatomi artist Woody Crumbo covered the south corridor. In the main room, the walls were divided between Houser and Navajo painter Gerald Nailor. The Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, insisted on commissioning artwork by Native American artists. Because of this mandate, the Section of Fine Arts invited Herrera, Crumbo, Houser, and Nailor to participate in the penthouse project and contacted two Kiowa artists, James Auchiah and Stephen Mopope, to paint murals for the cafeteria.