INDEX OF AMERICAN DESIGN
More than 1,000 artists participated in the index, a federal work project established during the Depression to provide employment for artists and to create a permanent archive of American design. The index artists recorded the objects meticulously, using an illusionistic painting technique that recalls the trompe l'oeil ("fool the eye") works of the Peale family, William Michael Harnett, and other still life painters in the American realist tradition.
The index serves as a lasting example of government sponsorship of the arts and cultural history during the Depression era. In 1943, the National Gallery of Art was chosen as a place where index renderings would be accessible to the nation and treated as both an archive and as works of art.