The WPA & the Golden Age · See America / The Parks
Please keep the park clean
Work Projects Administration, 1938
What it is
A 1938 Work Projects Administration conservation poster, silkscreened in flat color on board, showing a boy seated against a tree trunk with a butterfly net in hand. The designer is unrecorded; it survives in the Library of Congress WPA Poster Collection.
Why it matters
The WPA's Federal Art Project put unemployed artists to work making posters for the public good, and this is New Deal civics at its plainest: the parks belong to you, so keep them worth having. It speaks to a single citizen through a single child, turning a maintenance request into an argument about shared land. The verso carries a Library of Congress date stamp of October 18, 1938.
What to notice
The image is built from flat, unshaded planes of silkscreen color, each pass laid down as its own solid field rather than blended.
A small favor, asked of everyone who ever owned a park.
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 · LCCN98517123 (digital ID cph.3f05414)
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
