Defenders of New Deal art fight in historic Washington, D.C., buildings
USA TODAY reporter Sarah D. Wyer explains the fight to save a New Deal-era mural on a historic building in Washington, D.C., from sale.
WASHINGTON – Mary Orkin never walked the green marble hallways of the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building.
She had never seen the series of priceless murals by famous American artists that stand as a testament to the New Deal in the building that was once slated to house the Social Security Administration.
But Orkin, a California-based art historian and assistant director of the online public archive Living New Deal, is the “grand central station” of President Donald Trump’s growing effort to block the sale of the Cohen Building.
The 1 million-square-foot building, built by the federal government in 1940 near the National Mall, is one of more than 40 buildings on President Trump’s list for immediate sale.
The General Services Administration, an independent agency created in 1949 that manages hundreds of federal properties across the country, has protocols to maintain ownership of taxpayer-owned art and cannot remove it when the government sells federal buildings. But Orkin and a coalition of advocates, art historians and members of Congress fear the Trump administration will ignore them and destroy irreplaceable American heritage.
Orkin said she first felt uneasy in March 2025, when the Trump administration cut 3,000 jobs, including two-thirds of GSA’s art and historic preservation staff. The remaining 11 people are responsible for managing and inspecting the collection’s more than 26,000 works, one of the nation’s oldest and largest public art collections.
Most of the 26,000 works, including paintings, textiles and sculptures, are on loan to museums. The rest are on display in federal buildings across the country. Much of the collection is federally funded New Deal-era art.
“I became very concerned about what was going to happen to all these objects,” she told USA TODAY. “They’re worth a lot of money. They’re ours too.”
Orkin tried to sound the alarm about the potential threat to New Deal art in federal buildings, but was discouraged when few art historians joined her movement. The organization she works for, Living New Deal, aims to document the lasting impact of the New Deal on American life. There is no history of advocacy or litigation.
President Trump then demolished the east wing of the White House and built a new ballroom. He announced plans to paint the Eisenhower Executive Building’s historic granite facade. He then announced plans to close the Kennedy Center for two years while employees carry out extensive renovations.
Immediately there were calls to join Okin.
social security business
In 1988, President Ronald Reagan named the building after Cohen, a longtime public servant who was a key architect of the creation and expansion of America’s social safety net, including both the New Deal and Great Society programs under Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson.
Mr. Cohen, who died in 1987, was also a mentor to Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, a political advocacy group that seeks to expand access to Social Security. She told the group’s executive director, Alex Lawson, to determine whether members were interested in art in the building. The response has been overwhelming, he said.
Lawson said witnessing the destruction of the East Tower was a turning point for many people.
“We watched President Trump break every law that he would use to protect Cohenville,” Lawson said.
He said Social Security Works views the sale of the building and the new owner’s possible destruction of the mural as an attack on Social Security.
“We’re adamant that we’re not going to let them erase the story of Social Security,” Lawson said.
He also realized that Orkin’s knowledge and connections in the art preservation world, combined with his experience and connections on Capitol Hill and in advocacy work, would make for a powerful team.
“We brought in a rowdy activist,” Lawson said. “There are people who say that if they try to bring in bulldozers like they did in the East Tower, we’ll stop the bulldozers, we’ll protest to stop the bulldozers.”
Prior to September 11, 2001, the Cohen Building, like most federal buildings, was open to the public. Currently, the only people passing by the mural throughout the day are federal employees and occasional art tour groups.
A mural on one side of the Cohen Building’s main hallway depicts an elderly woman on crutches inside a collapsing building. Other scenes include a father and son wandering along railroad tracks, a boy limping past a child lying on the road, and men waiting for work.
A mural on the other side depicts men welding beams for new buildings, harvesting crops, and erecting new walls, some of them enrolling in social security. All the murals make up one piece titled “The Meaning of Social Security,” created by Ben Shahn in 1942 and made of egg tempura on dry plaster.
The original entrance to the building has two frescoes painted in wet plaster by Seymour Vogel in 1942. On the right is “National Safety,” which depicts a family relaxing. On the left is “Wealth of Nations,” which shows the economic success needed to bring the country out of the Great Depression.
Both artists specialized in social realist art, focused on the hardships of American life, and participated in several government art programs that employed artists during the Great Depression. They had successful and distinguished careers, with their work exhibited in major American museums.
Shaan is also known for his photography and left-wing politics. Vogel was a pioneer of modern and abstract art.
Vogel and Scharn’s parts are chemically bonded to the building’s walls and cannot be easily removed.
The building also features four sculptures and two oil paintings on canvas. In the facility’s main auditorium, a three-panel work by Philip Guston from 1943 entitled “Reconstruction and Family Happiness” fills the stage. It is the easiest of the large murals to move because it is attached to a wooden panel.
“It’s a beautiful idea that public servants are so dedicated to building a social safety net that they care enough to create some kind of social security palace for working-class people and decorate it with art,” Okin said.
push or pull
During the Biden administration, the General Services Administration determined it would cost at least $500 million to completely modernize the Cohen Building with new electrical systems, windows and insulation, said Jonathan Stern, a former GSA asset manager whose portfolio also included the Cohen Building. He said they also looked at ways to restore the building to a state where it can operate at full capacity for more than 4,000 federal employees and make it essentially energy-neutral.
He said Congress was unlikely to spend that much money if it could be sold to a private company to renovate it. He expects it to sell.
“I don’t know how this building could realistically be used,” Stern said. The study is 95% complete, he said, but has not been made public.
Just before Biden left office, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) included a requirement in the water bill that the Cohen building be sold to the General Services Administration if it remains vacant for two years.
Although intended to house the Social Security Administration, World War II had begun by the time the building was completed, and the space was requisitioned by the War Department. Since then, several institutions have lived there.
The building currently houses the U.S. Agency for Global Media and Voice of America, which was in the process of moving last year when most of its employees were furloughed. The administration terminated the lease on the new space, but a judge recently ordered VOA to reinstate all staff. It is unknown where they operate from.
Ernst has focused for years on convincing GSA to sell empty or underutilized federal buildings.
Ernst said in a statement that he put the Cohen building up for sale because so few people work there.
“It speaks volumes that only 2 percent of the people who actually worked and were paid to work at the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building actually came to see the mural. Given that fact, the fate of that work of art should be left to the property buyer. But there should be no delay in stripping taxpayers of their dime from this expensive monument of waste,” she said.
Her office added that the mural could be donated to the nearby Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History or the National Gallery of Art.
Congress generally does not mandate the sale of specific government buildings. Instead, the General Services Administration decides which buildings and properties to sell and when.
GSA spokeswoman Marianne Copenhaver said in a statement that GSA complies with the law.
“GSA has actively engaged art conservation experts to evaluate the paintings and develop a plan to protect them should the government move forward with disposition of the Wilbur J. Cohen Building,” Copenhaver said. “We are committed to working with property owners who are responsible for managing any artwork involved in the sale or transfer of their property.”
All New Deal-era artwork paid for by taxpayers belongs to the federal government and cannot be sold. If New Deal art cannot be removed when a government building is sold, GSA retains ownership of the artwork and leases the building’s art subject to historic preservation requirements.
Of the 454 murals in GSA’s art collection, only three are at risk of sale on the early disposal list. They are all located in the Cohen building.
parliamentary support
Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, remembers the first time he walked past the Fogel and Shean mural before the pandemic.
“The whole building is really a testament to the relationship between workers and government and the promise of Social Security,” Doggett told USA TODAY. “These murals tell us something about the struggles and issues that led to the creation of Social Security and the benefits it now provides to generations of Americans.”
When he learned the Cohen building was for sale, he organized a mural tour for members of Congress, knowing that many people had never been inside the building before, even though it’s just a few blocks from the Capitol.
Doggett asked the House Appropriations Committee to ensure in the spending bill that the mural would be protected if the building is sold.
He worries that the GSA’s code is too flexible to protect art, or that the Trump administration won’t allow the GSA to abide by it.
“I’m troubled by the fact that we are now in the era of the Trump administration, where the GSA could well be encouraged to spend whatever profits it thinks it can get from the top price for this property rather than preserving this priceless art object,” he said.
He questioned why the government has to sell buildings it already owns in the heart of other federal buildings when it leases office space in private buildings in Washington, Maryland and Virginia.
Other Democrats in Congress are concerned that the decline in GSA art staff means the art collections funded by taxpayers are not being properly managed. Several members asked agency leaders to explain how they were handling the load with so few employees.
On March 11, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) sent a letter to General Services Administration Secretary Ed Forst requesting information about how the collection is being maintained, especially if federal buildings housing art are up for sale.
“Art collections belong to the American people, and it is imperative that GSA upholds its obligation to preserve and protect these works for future generations,” the letter said.
Several members of Congress recently toured the building with Doggett to experience the art.
And on April 7, one year after she began drawing attention to the potential loss, Ms. Orkin will get a chance to see the mural for herself while traveling to Washington to speak to members of Congress.
