The WPA & the Golden Age · The Public Good
Is your child vaccinated?
Chicago Department of Health, 1938
What it is
A WPA silkscreen public-health poster for the Chicago Department of Health, produced sometime between 1936 and 1941. Its entire design is a single oversized red question mark set beside the words "Is your child vaccinated?"
Why it matters
It belongs to the Federal Art Project's poster shops, which put unemployed printmakers to work turning civic messages into cheap, striking screen prints. This one ran in a Chicago health campaign alongside a companion diphtheria toxoid poster, aimed squarely at parents and built to be read across a crowded streetcar platform. It carries the era's conviction that good design was public infrastructure, not decoration.
What to notice
There is no illustration and no figure at all - the giant red question mark does every bit of the compositional work.
Punctuation as a tap on the shoulder.
Provenance
- School
- WPA — Federal Art Project (United States)
- Format
- Political poster
- Poster published
- Chicago Department of Health, 1938
- Source
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division · 98507705
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
