Documenting CETA’s Impact
on the Cultural Sector

ART/WORK is dedicated to uncovering and amplifying the overlooked history of the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) and its transformative role in supporting artists and culture workers. Through rigorous archival research, oral history recording, exhibitions, and public programming, we examine how CETA not only provided direct employment for culture workers but also shaped public arts infrastructure, influenced cultural policy, and redefined the role of practitioners in civic and community life.

While many recognize the radical creative movements of the 1960s and 1970s, the federal investment in culture workers through CETA has remained largely absent from mainstream historical narratives. Yet, it was one of the most ambitious efforts to sustain creative practitioners as workers, embedding them in community-driven projects and public institutions. Our research seeks to reinstate CETA’s place within the broader story of cultural production, examining the ways in which public funding enabled artists to engage in site-specific interventions, create socially engaged work, and expand the definition of artistic labor.

By connecting past and present, our work explores the practical and political lessons CETA offers today—how public investment in artists can create tangible cultural and economic impact, strengthen communities, and sustain creative careers. We investigate how CETA’s structure supported artists in ways that remain relevant, particularly in the context of today’s conversations around economic precarity, equitable labor practices, and the need for sustainable arts infrastructure. Through this lens, we ask: What might we learn from CETA’s successes and limitations to inform present-day policy and funding initiatives? How can its models be adapted for the contemporary cultural workforce?

At its core, this project is about recognition, advocacy, and action—ensuring that CETA’s legacy informs ambitious, lasting solutions for how artists are valued and supported in society. We believe that acknowledging this history is not just an act of preservation but an opportunity to shape the future of cultural policy, pushing for bold, systemic change that positions artists as integral contributors to civic and economic life.

Top: Baltimore Neighborhood Arts Circus. Photo courtesy Philip Arnoult 
Bottom: Pan-sector CETA demonstration in Times Square, 1979. Photo: Sarah Wells


Our Values.

  • Knowledge and resources should be shared and received with respect, reciprocity, and recognition.

  • No one person owns this story; no one history represents the sum total of this time; no one person can speak for the experiences of others. This is a story told through many voices. There are no experts. 

  • Change is not a solitary value. Only by talking with one another and acting together can we instigate change to a system that habitually extracts labor from the people on which it depends.

  • The purpose of this work is to capture the progress of and challenges faced by previous generations of culture workers, so as to understand how the efforts of our time are embedded within a continuum of advocacy.

  • Do not mistake one for the other. We aim to recognize the difference between the two and identify the qualities and conditions that foster the latter.

  • To do this work, we must live the values embedded within this history. Labor of all forms is valuable, even when it falls outside of traditional definitions of work that shape our collective sense of the U.S. economy. Value is not a protected right for some at the exclusion of others; it is not dependent upon class, race, age, ability, level of education, location, or family/inherited history.

Project History

Top to bottom: CCF CETA Artists Project Reunion, 2018. Photo: Molly Garfinkel; Molly Garfinkel and Virginia Maksymowicz reviewing the CCF CETA Artists Project collection at the NYC Municipal Archives' Industry City facility, October 2021. Photo: Blaise Tobia; Former Assistant Secretary of Labor Ernest Green with videographer Curtis Wilson, Molly Garfinkel, and Jodi Waynberg; spring 2024 convening of ART/WORK: CETA's Impact and the Future of Arts Employment.

The seeds of this research were planted in 2011, when we first encountered CETA’s profound impact on the cultural sector through long-time collaborators. We were captivated—how had two art historians not heard more about this? By 2017, we began conducting oral histories with CETA alumni and allies, and combing through personal and institutional archives. In partnership with the CETA Arts Legacy Project, we co-convened an advisory committee—former CETA artists, administrators, project architects, public historians, and cultural policy advocates—launching an exciting effort to unearth and amplify CETA’s artistic and structural legacy. Shortly after, we hosted a reunion for the New York City CCF CETA Artists Project at City Lore. The stories that emerged weren’t just fascinating—they were urgent. CETA had transformed careers, communities, and the cultural landscape at large, yet so few knew its story.

In 2021, City Lore and Artists Alliance Inc. co-curated ART/WORK: How the Government-Funded CETA Jobs Program Put Artists to Work, a two-venue exhibition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation. Mounted at City Lore Gallery and AAI’s Cuchifritos Gallery (December 2021–March 2022), the exhibition spotlighted the history and impact of the CCF CETA Artists Project. A 24-page booklet accompanied the show, now housed in The Miriam & Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs at the New York Public Library.

During its run, City Lore and AAI forged a partnership with Creatives Rebuild New York (CRNY), a Mellon Foundation-supported initiative investing in artists’ employment across New York State. CETA’s legacy was a touchstone for CRNY’s vision, and we were grateful for their co-sponsorship of two public programs tied to the exhibition. March 2021’s Artist Labor and the Legacy of CETA brother together CETA artists and administrators from across the country, parsing the nuances of New York City’s CETA Artist Project, San Francisco’s CETA arts programs, and others. In May 2023, Sustaining Arts Labor: Past and Present, hosted at Bluestockings Bookstore, explored the intersections of artists’ labor, government support, and community engagement, laying groundwork for future discourse on integrating artists into the broader labor economy.

With Mellon Foundation support, our research expanded nationwide, incorporating case studies from Baltimore, Washington D.C., Atlanta, New Orleans, Whitesburg (KY), Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. While City Lore focused on gathering the personal histories of CETA-funded culture workers, administrators, and beneficiaries, AAI collaborated with scholars, policymakers, and cultural advocates to contextualize CETA’s significance in today’s discussions on equity, representation, and access. This work has allowed us to document hundreds of voices, while investigating whether the structures CETA pioneered might serve as blueprints for contemporary and future cultural labor initiatives.

In March 2024, City Lore and AAI hosted a two-day national gathering of twenty thought leaders—including CETA alumni from across the country—to interrogate CETA’s lasting impact and its contemporary echoes. Timed to mark fifty years since the first CETA arts program launched in San Francisco, the convening assessed past and present arts employment models and imagined new pathways for supporting the creative workforce. A consensus emerged: these histories must be made more accessible to a broader audience. To that end, we organized a public screening of It’s Basic, Marc Levin’s 2023 documentary on pilot Guaranteed Income programs, followed by a dynamic talk-back with Levin—himself a CCF CETA alumnus—at Anthology Film Archives.

As this work evolves, we remain committed to deepening our understanding of CETA’s legacy, probing its lessons, and translating its successes into actionable strategies for sustaining culture workers and advancing equity in the arts.

Contact Us.

Hello, we would love to hear from you! Please feel free to reach out if you would like to collaborate, learn more about this project, or share your own CETA history.