Peace and Harvest Sculptures

The Peace and Harvest sculptures are a pair of eight-foot limestone figures created during the New Deal era under the Works Progress Administration. Carved in the 1930s, they represent two of the foundational concerns of the agricultural Midwest — the end of conflict and the bounty of the land — in the blocky, dignified style that the WPA's artist programs favored. They are good examples of the public art the New Deal scattered across the country, much of which has worn better than the politics that surrounded it.

The sculptures stand in the downtown area and are worth pausing in front of even if your main errand lies elsewhere. They are the kind of thing that gets walked past by locals without notice but that a visitor with an eye for public art will appreciate immediately. The craftsmanship is solid, the scale is right for pedestrian viewing, and the limestone has aged well in the Illinois climate.

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The Peace and Harvest sculptures were carved under the Works Progress Administration, the New Deal program that put unemployed artists to work during the Great Depression. The WPA art program was controversial at the time — critics called it a waste of government money to commission art during an economic crisis — but it produced thousands of murals, sculptures, and public works across the country, many of which remain the best public art in their cities. Peoria's limestone figures are characteristic of the WPA style: monumental, idealized human forms meant to embody civic virtues rather than commemorate specific individuals.

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