Artists working for the Federal Art Project (FAP), a part of the Work Projects Administration (WPA), created thousands of posters between 1936 and 1943. The posters took on all manner of topics: public health and safety, cultural events and exhibitions, education, tourism, and wartime warnings, to name a few. Only a small percentage of those posters survive, and today they continue to deliver their messages with strong graphics and few words.
With that in mind, it seems only fair that I let the posters do the rest of the talking, while I keep mum!
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Learn More:
- View a selection of WPA posters on the Library of Congress Flickr account. Posters featured in this post are part of a few dozen recently added to the album.
- Explore the over 900 WPA posters in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog.
- Within the WPA poster collection, enjoy more examples of posters related to:
- World War II, with messages about careless talk, victory gardens, war bonds, and more.
- Children, and their health, happiness and education.
- Expositions and World’s Fairs, including the Indian Court of the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, and the 1939 World’s Fair in New York.
- Adult education, including classes in art, reading, writing, psychology, as well as trade and technical courses.
Comments (5)
I teach screen printing and would love to get more information about the WPA poster production. Where, who, how, techniques used to create artwork, etc. Can you steer me to information regarding the process of producing the posters. I would like to include some of this for historical background for the class.
Thanks,
Bert
P.S. I think these posters are a real national treasure.
Thanks for your comment and your inquiry through our Ask A Librarian page, Mr. Johnson! We are going to answer your specific questions through Ask A Librarian, so you will receive a separate email.
For anyone interested in more background about the WPA posters and their creation, please read the WPA Posters Background and Scope web page as well as consult our WPA Posters Selected Bibliography.
Do you ever plan to reprint the posters and sell them to the public? If so, I’d like to buy a copy of the “Grow Your Own Garden” poster for my daughter-in-law, who is doing just that in 2015! Thanks for putting these up. They are gems.
I was bvorn in the middle of the Great Depression, what I remember is more what my family tells me, but I do remember ssome of these posters that remained as I grew up. One I recall dealt with spitting and the dangers to public health it carried.
Absolute treasures!