The WPA & the Golden Age · See America / The Parks
Olympic bobsled run, Lake Placid
Work Projects Administration, 1938
What it is
An unattributed WPA silkscreen advertising the Olympic bobsled run at Lake Placid, New York, made around 1938. It sells a place by selling a sensation: speed on ice.
Why it matters
The Federal Art Project's poster division put unemployed artists to work turning state parks and civic destinations into travel copy, and Lake Placid still carried the charge of hosting the 1932 Winter Games. Silkscreen was the shop's workhorse: a hand process that laid down dense, saturated color in short local runs, which is why a poster like this could be cheap, bold, and everywhere at once.
What to notice
The color arrives in flat screened planes with no gradient or shading, so the run's downhill pitch is carried entirely by composition rather than modeled light.
A public-works job selling the thrill of falling fast.
Provenance
- School
- WPA — Federal Art Project (United States)
- Format
- Travel poster
- Poster published
- Work Projects Administration, 1938
- Source
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division · LCCN94502739 (digital ID cph.3f05630)
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
