Art: The Big Frieze

Three summers ago, San Francisco's Board of Education asked the WPA Art Project to provide a bas-relief for George Washington High School, on which construction was then beginning. The bas-relief was intended to be the world's biggest frieze: a panel 12 ft. high, 183 ft. long, set in a wall at the end of an athletic field, where spectators could view it. WPA agreed, under a standard arrangement whereby it would furnish the work, the board the cost of materials. The wall and bas-relief were to be poured as one concrete unit. But that notion had to be abandoned. Not until...