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Department of Interior Murals
The United States Department of the Interior Murals in Washington D.C., The Homestead, and The Oklahoma Land Rush, were painted with oil and tempera on canvas and installed November 1938 by John Steuart Curry. Created during the Great Depression, the murals are the product of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

The two murals depict events of the time period, the Homestead Acts and the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889.

The Homestead
This nine foot by 19 feet eight inch mural represents the homestead itself, with all the typical features that make up the blessed peace, happiness, and potential prosperity of ensuring rural life. The Homestead features a mother and her daughter paring potatoes near a small garden for the family meal. A young son holds the fenceposts while his father drives them into the ground. An older sister drives the wagon full of spikes while she also cares for the youngest child. Each member of the family is actively working and contributing its energies to the productive whole. Near the bottom left of the mural, roosters, chicks, and chickens peck and feed near the foreground garden as bountiful reminders of their capacity to provide this frontier family with eggs.

The Oklahoma Land Rush
Just two inches taller than its partner painting, this nine feet two inch by 19 feet eight inch mural represents another historical event from the time period. The Oklahoma Land Rush depicts the Westward Migration in the representation of that famous day—twelve o'clock noon on April 22, 1889—when the Oklahoma Territory was opened to homestead settlement and over twenty thousand prospective settlers rushed into the new land to stake their claims. Anxious but looking forward to eventual security, an 1889 pioneer mother, sunbonnet intact, is of greatest importance to the far left foreground of Curry's westward-moving mural. Perched on a broken-down wagon, she clutches her small son while waving and calling out to her certificate-holding husband, who, astride their rearing horse, is to ride on to claim a new farm site. His hellbent competition includes a cyclist riding a high, "ordinary" safety bicycle from the 1880s and an overweight, overdressed lady in a rocking chair. She rolls back in an open wagon driven frantically by her balding husband, and, if nothing else, lends comic relief to balance the anxious sincerity of the mother on the ground.

John Steuart Curry's Oklahoma Land Rush repeated an important theme of the time: history told through the actions of common people. By emphasizing the rush of figures across the land, Curry shared his concern with capturing the energy and vigor of American pioneers.

Primary Sketches
There are a few primary sketches of figures and ideas for these two murals in the archives located at the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art at Kansas State University.