![WPA mural, Cohen Building, Washington, D.C.]](https://images.newrepublic.com/f33fa4193119e4085777772c677ba0dd04a6e53b.jpeg?auto=format&fit=crop&crop=faces&ar=3%3A2&ixlib=react-9.11.0&q=65&w=1400&dpr=5)
In March, I reported on a tour conducted by the General Services Administration, the executive branch’s real estate arm, of the remarkable New Deal murals and sculptures in Washington’s Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, which the Trump administration had designated for “accelerated disposition.” These art works include, among other things, frescoes by Ben Shahn that the artist once called “the best work I’ve done,” as well as gorgeous murals by Philip Guston and Seymour Fogel—all paid for by your grandparents and mine. The architectural historian Gray Brechin, founder of the nonprofit Living New Deal, describes the Cohen as “a kind of Sistine Chapel of the New Deal.”
As recently as last fall, the Trump administration was collecting bids to demolish the Cohen building and the art inside it, according to Mydelle Wright, a well-regarded former senior official who worked on preservation at the GSA. (The GSA responded with what Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, during the Watergate scandal, famously called a “non-denial denial.”) Since then, reason has emerged for cautious optimism that the Cohen can be saved, most recently new legislation introduced Monday by Democratic Representatives Dina Titus of Nevada and Lloyd Doggett of Texas.
I attended the March Cohen tour with several members of Congress, including Doggett, who, like Titus, is a member of the bipartisan Congressional Arts Caucus. (The Democratic co-chair of the Congressional Arts Caucus, Rep. Chellie Pingree, later offered an appropriations amendment to compel GSA to release publicly a study about refurbishing the Cohen that the Trump administration suppressed. The amendment failed in committee, but, in a hopeful sign, it picked up two Republican votes.) The Cohen tour was actually Doggett’s second, I was pleased to learn; he’s known about the Shahn murals inside the Cohen building for years. (The building is two blocks from the Capitol.) Doggett showed me some legislative language he had drafted requiring protection of all art works in the Cohen building, and when I asked whether he supported flat-out barring the Cohen sale, Doggett said yes.
The Protecting Resources and Ensuring Stewardship of Enduring Records of Visual Expression (PRESERVE) bill doesn’t do that, alas. But it would require the GSA, “not later than 30 days” after it designates a federal property for disposal, to determine whether the property contains protected art; to notify the appropriate congressional committees within 30 days after that; and “not later than 90 days” before a scheduled demolition or sale, to create a preservation committee of experts, including at least one member of the GSA’s own Fine Arts Program (drastically reduced by DOGE but, thankfully, not eliminated). The preservation committee must then submit a plan, to be posted online, to preserve the artwork “to the maximum extent possible, including through a preservation covenant in an outlease agreement and sale terms, or moving covered artwork to another facility or museum.” No sale or demolition may take place until the GSA administrator “certifies to the appropriate congressional committees” that the GSA is implementing a preservation plan and that “the covered artwork … will remain publicly accessible under any future owners or tenants of the property.”
In the bill, art that must be protected is defined as any that within the past five years was managed by the GSA, including any New Deal art. Rep. Titus told me by email that the bill would protect “all of the 26,000 pieces of art in GSA’s Fine Arts Collection.” The press release announcing the bill name-checks the Cohen building as being under “immediate threat.” It also points out that in the case of the Cohen building, “the frescoes are embedded in the walls” so “they cannot simply be taken out of the building or transported to another location.”
Legal protections for New Deal art in federal buildings exist already, in case law and in regulations. But President Donald Trump has little regard for the former and he’s waging war on the latter. The Cohen building has since 2007 been listed in the National Register of Historic Places, which requires extensive preservation-minded review prior to disposal. This is called the “Section 106 process” (named for that section of the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act). The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, or AHCP, administers Section 106, and soon after entering office Trump removed three members after two others resigned, depriving ACHP of a quorum for about a year. When it re-opened for business this past February, ACHP immediately launched a comprehensive review of Section 106 with the avowed purpose of “streamlining” its preservation requirements. So, putting preservation requirements in statutory language would seem an excellent idea.
In addition, Rep. Titus told me, her bill would introduce an enforcement mechanism currently lacking in Section 106 review:
My bill would create a process whereby the General Services Administration would have to certify that it is following a preservation plan established by experts before moving forward with a building disposal. This will ensure that publicly commissioned art is taken care of during the disposal process under this administration, and all future administrations for that matter. It also requires GSA to certify that the artwork will continue to be publicly available after the disposal in question.
The Cohen building’s sale was mandated by Congress in an amendment that Rep. Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, inserted into a water resources bill in January 2025. It’s pretty unusual for Congress to tell GSA which buildings to sell, and in this case neither Ernst nor her staff had any clue that the building contained important art. Titus’s bill disappointed me by not repealing the Ernst amendment. I asked Titus why not. “That provision was in an appropriations bill,” she replied, “which is a separate fight.” But since Ernst’s amendment wasn’t an appropriation, I’m not sure why that should matter. Also, Titus said, “I do not oppose the sale of the building outright.”
I do oppose the sale, so I guess we differ in that regard. I take some comfort that certain infrastructure realities are on my side. As I reported last month, Rich Butterworth, senior analyst and adviser with the GSA’s Office of Real Property Utilization and Disposal, and a career civil servant, pointed out on June 25 that because the Cohen shares heating and electrical equipment with a sister building across C St. (the Mary E. Switzer Memorial Federal Building)—a property that GSA does not intend to sell—it follows that unloading the Cohen would cost the federal government a lot of money to reroute a bunch of underground cables and ducts and whatnot. “While a lot of people would like to see this building disposed of,” said Butterworth, ”and given its underutilization rate, we understand why, our thought is, unless we can solve that problem, that might be a building that’s better reinvested in and get back to a utilization rate that would make sense and justify the level of investment.” Amen.
At any rate, repealing the Ernst amendment wouldn’t bar the GSA from selling the Cohen building. It would merely leave the question up to the GSA, which is how it usually works. So, the Ernst amendment really needs to be repealed.
But that’s a battle for another day.
Titus’s bill represents a significant step forward toward saving the Cohen, and it’s endorsed by the nonprofit Living New Deal and Social Security Works, the two major groups fighting to preserve the building and its art. So onward and upward.
Cohen Building Archive:
June 26, 2026: “The ‘Sistine Chapel of the New Deal’ May Be Saved!”
June 15, 2026: “Is Trump Selling Himself Back His D.C. Hotel?”
March 27, 2026: “The Fight to Save D.C.’s Sistine Chapel From Trump”
December 10, 2025: “Can the ‘Sistine Chapel of the New Deal’ Be Saved From Trump?”
October 3, 2025: “There Was a Plan To Save These New Deal Masterpieces. Then Trump Won”
September 30, 2025: “The New Deal Masterpieces Threatened By Trump’s Downsizing”
