said that Rockefeller Center management had not cajoled Brangwyn in any way. Meanwhile, replacements for Man at the Crossroads were being considered, and Rockefeller Center Inc. approached many artists for possible offers. Initially, Picasso showed interest in the commission, but Todd declined the offer because Picasso refused to show a preview of what he was going to paint, and because Picasso would not negotiate from his stated price of $32,000. In 1937, Sert agreed to paint the replacement mural for $27,000. The mural, titled American Progress, depicts a vast allegorical scene of men constructing modern America, and contains figures of Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. American Progress wraps around the west wall of 30 Rockefeller Plaza's Grand Lobby. According to American Heritage magazine, the controversy influenced Franklin D. Roosevelt’s reaction to the idea of a Federal Art Project and similar New Deal-funded public art initiatives: “Commenting on the suggestion that the federal government should undertake a relief program for unemployed artists, Roosevelt expressed some misgiving: he didn't want, he told a friend in 1933, ‘a lot of young enthusiasts painting Lenin's head on the Justice Building.’“ The New Deal art programs were ultimately funded and persisted until the height of World War II, and in the end, “The New Deal administration did its best to give American artists easy rein, recognizing that freedom and originality are inseparable. There were exceptional cases, especially in connection with over a thousand murals executed under Treasury Department auspices for United States post offices across the country; but in general the absence of censorship was remarkable.” Man, Controller of the Universe Concerned that Nelson Rockefeller would destroy the work, Rivera had asked Lucienne Bloch to take photographs of the mural before it could be destroyed. In late 1933, Rivera went to Mexico City and persuaded the Mexican government to let him repaint the mural on a blank wall at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. In his biography of Rivera, Bertram Wolfe stated that the artist did not care for the location of the mural this time around. Rather, Wolfe wrote, Rivera had been "looking for a public place where he could let men see what kind of painting it was that these 'patrons of the arts' had chosen to destroy". Using the photographs as a reference, Rivera repainted the mural, though at a smaller scale, where it was renamed Man, Controller of