The WPA & the Golden Age · The Public Good
Milk - for warmth
Cleveland Division of Health, 1941
What it is
A 1941 silkscreen public-health poster made by the WPA's Federal Art Project for the Cleveland Division of Health. A woman in winter clothing holds up a glass of milk, captioned "Milk - for warmth."
Why it matters
This is late-Depression nutrition policy sold as a picture: milk pitched as cheap civic health, a thing a city health department could put on a wall and afford to mean. The Federal Art Project's poster divisions turned out this kind of work by the thousand, and this one reduces the whole argument to a single equation between the drink and body heat. It belongs to the broad municipal campaigns that framed diet as public infrastructure.
What to notice
The pitch rests on one visual claim - the raised glass held up like a small furnace, milk standing in for warmth itself.
A glass of milk asked to do the work of a coat.
Provenance
- School
- WPA — Federal Art Project (United States)
- Format
- Political poster
- Poster published
- Cleveland Division of Health, 1941
- Source
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division · 98518820
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
