The WPA & the Golden Age · See America / Cities & States
Pennsylvania
Katherine Milhous · Work Projects Administration Poster Collection, 1938
What it is
Katherine Milhous drew this WPA travel poster for Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, showing an Amish couple in plain dress against broad blocks of unmodulated color.
Why it matters
The Library of Congress dates it only to a range, between 1936 and 1941, and notes the surviving sheet was signed in pencil by the artist. Milhous, herself Pennsylvania-Dutch by upbringing, spent the Federal Art Project years mining that folk vocabulary, and it carried her later into children's book illustration.
What to notice
An Amish couple in flat lithographic color, selling Lancaster County to anyone with a train ticket.
Made by artists on the public payroll — art the country already owned.
Provenance
- School
- WPA — Federal Art Project (United States)
- Designer
- Katherine Milhous
- Format
- One-sheet
- Poster published
- Work Projects Administration Poster Collection, 1938
- Source
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division · LCCN 98518749 (digital ID cph.3b51487)
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
