Security of the People

Seymour Fogel’s Security of the People presents an American family surrounded by the signs of physical and intellectual well-being that social security provides: the man reads a newspaper at a table set with fresh fruit and water; the woman holds the youngest of three children; the boy plays tennis in a clean, white outfit; and the girl draws on a board, a pile of books at her feet. The trellis at the left indicates natural growth, while the crane and girders in the background point to architectural expansion.

The design of Fogel’s two mural panels displayed in this lobby changed substantially (largely in response to extensive feedback from the Section of Fine Arts, the Social Security Board, and the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts), from two panels entitled Security and Insecurity, which directly addressed the suffering of the American workforce, to these final murals, which are clearer, more concise, and more optimistic. Fogel intended for his murals' symbolic subject matter to complement the more literal content of the murals by his colleague Ben Shahn, who decorated the adjacent corridor in this building, and with whom Fogel had trained as a muralist when they both served as assistants to Diego Rivera in 1932 on his Rockefeller Center murals project in New York City.