Family Group

Emma Lou Davis’ Family Group depicts a father taking leave of his wife and child to go to work. Davis captured the couple at an affectionate moment and portrayed each figure with a sign of their day’s labor—a lunch pail for the man and a bowl for the woman. Below, a child pulls at the hem of the mother’s dress alluding to another of her responsibilities. The profile carved around the figures represents the embrace of the state and the guarantee of the household’s security. The family no longer has to worry about disability or unemployment thanks to the benefits offered by the Social Security Administration.

Emma Lou Davis was one of few women chosen for a prestigious fine arts commission by the government during the New Deal. She carved two bas relief panels for the exterior of the new Social Security Administration headquarters. The complimentary panels are mounted above the Fourth and C Streets SW entrances of the building and depict the role of the state in providing for the long term security of the individual and family. The panels are chiseled into nine-by-eight-foot slabs of dark gray granite and polished to a high gloss. The Section of Fine Arts dictated the color and sheen of the granite in order to unify the work of three artists: Emma Lou Davis and Henry Kreis, each of whom created two reliefs at this building, and Robert Kittredge, who completed a pair of reliefs for the Mary E. Switzer Building across the street.