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FRANK WEATHERS LONG
American, 1906-1999
Chamber Music, 1940
Oil on canvas
Gift of Dr. and Mrs. William S. Morgan 1987.13
See Interpretive Text
Chamber Music
Long was born in Knoxville and educated at the Chicago Art Institute, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and the Académie Julian in Paris. From 1932 to 1942, Long lived in Berea and completed federal art commissions for murals in post offices and other public buildings in Lexington, Louisville, and Morehead, as well as in Illinois, Indiana, Oklahoma, Maryland, and South Carolina. In his murals and paintings of the 1930s and ‘40s, he represented Kentuckians at work and play in a style that combined mythic grandeur with regional specificity. After serving in the Army Corps of Engineers from 1942 to 1946, Long returned to Berea to establish a handmade jewelry studio. From 1951 to 1958, he was the director of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, a program of the U.S. Interior Department, and provided training and marketing support for native crafts people in Alaska. He subsequently served similar assignments in New Mexico and Florida, before retiring in 1969 to Albuquerque, where he resumed his career making his own jewelry and sculpture.