New Deal Utopias explores one of the most ambitious but overlooked programs of the New Deal, the Greenbelt Towns, designed and built by the United States government to be model cities in the 1930s. The program was critiqued as "communistic" by conservative members of Congress, industrial and corporate leaders, and newspapers, yet they still managed to make an indelible impression on urbanist ideas in America. Jason Reblando's contemporary photographs of Greenbelt, Maryland; Greenhills, Ohio; and Greendale, Wisconsin offer a rich visual and intellectual experience and invite viewers to reflect upon planned communities and the human urge to create an ideal society.
Jason Reblando is an artist and photographer based in Chicago and Bloomington, Illinois.He received his MFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago, and a BA in Sociology from Boston College. He is the recipient of a U.S. Fulbright Fellowship to the Philippines and an Artist Fellowship Award from the Illinois Arts Council. His work has been published in the New York Times, Camera Austria, Slate, Bloomberg Businessweek, Real Simple, Places Journal, Chicago Magazine, and the Chicago Tribune. His photographs are part of the collections in the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Since 2011,
Natasha Egan has served as the executive director of the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago, where she was previously the associate director and curator since 2000. She has organized over fifty exhibitions with a focus on contemporary Asian art and artists concerned with societal issues, such as the environment, war, and economics. Egan has contributed essays to numerous publications and periodicals and lectures internationally.
Robert Leighninger, Jr. is a member of the Advisory Board of the National New Deal Preservation Association, the Board of Directors of the National Jobs for All Coalition, and a Project Adviser to the Living New Deal Project. Though trained as a sociologist, he has been immersed in the history of New Deal public works for the past 20 years. He is the author of
Long Range Public Investment: The Forgotten Legacy of the New Deal (University of South Carolina Press, 2007) and
Building Louisiana: The Legacy of the Public Works Administration (University Press of Mississippi, 2007) which won the Abel Wolman Award for best book on public works history given by the Public Works Historical Society, American Public Works Association.
