The WPA & the Golden Age · Reading & the Stage
Exhibition (Federal Art Project, Greek figure holding print)
Katherine Milhous · Federal Art Project / Work Projects Administration Poster Collection, 1936
What it is
A color woodcut exhibition poster designed by Katherine Milhous for the Federal Art Project, dated by the Library of Congress to between 1936 and 1938. A head-and-shoulders Greek figure, all contour and carved edge, holds up a print.
Why it matters
The WPA's Federal Art Project put artists to work making posters that sent people to free exhibitions of the art the program itself was producing. Milhous cut hers from wood rather than pulling it through a screen, the technique that dominates the collection, and signed the copy in pencil by hand. Reaching for a classical profile was the argument itself: the show is art, so the poster carries itself like one.
What to notice
Look at the edges of the figure — the woodcut leaves a carved, contoured line, blunter and more hand-worked than the flat sprayed shapes of the silkscreen posters around it.
A block of wood, cut to say: come look at what our hands can make.
Provenance
- School
- WPA — Federal Art Project (United States)
- Designer
- Katherine Milhous
- Format
- Exhibition poster
- Poster published
- Federal Art Project / Work Projects Administration Poster Collection, 1936
- Source
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division · LCCN 91795035
Rights: CLEAR. Public domain — U.S. government program work (WPA Federal Art Project), any year. Gated by the poster’s own publication year. Cleared by registry on 2026-07-18.
Format
The full-resolution, color-managed file — restored honestly, yours to print and keep.
Sized to protect print quality — this scan supports sizes up to 18x24" cleanly.
Size
$29.00
