The Cherry Pickers
A WPA art commission that was too exotic for Traverse City remains in a private collection.
In 1938, the federal Treasury Department funded the construction of a new post office in Traverse City, Michigan. As part of the New Deal’s commitment to public art, the building was commissioned to display an original work by Marion Overby, a graduate of the Cranbrook Academy of Art and one of only two women in Michigan to receive a Works Progress Administration art commission.
Installed in January of 1941, Overby created a wood relief entitled “The Cherry Pickers,” a piece notable for its influence of pre-Columbian art. The work was not well received. Public opposition, centered on the sentiment that the artwork was “inappropriate,” led the postmaster to remove it from display. At some point, the artwork was given away without government authorization to a local family, who has retained it ever since. In 2007, a U.S. Postal Service official contacted the current steward of the piece and suggested it be donated to a local museum. That conversation did not result in a transfer, and the work remains in a private residence in Grand Traverse County.
Recovering this work is not simply about reclaiming government property. It is about acknowledging that our public institutions have an opportunity to correct that record. Returning “The Cherry Pickers” to public view would be an act of historical accountability — recognizing an artist whose talent and significance have gone largely unacknowledged for nearly a century.
The deeper question is not whether the government can act. It is whether it will.
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