The WPA & the Golden Age · Reading & the Stage
Symphony concerts
Federal Music Project, Works Progress Administration, 1936
What it is
A silkscreen poster announcing Federal Music Project symphony concerts, made around 1936 by an unattributed hand in the WPA poster division. It survives as one print on board in the Library of Congress.
Why it matters
The Federal Music Project put unemployed musicians back to work under the Works Progress Administration, and this sheet did the plain job of filling seats at the Theatre of Music at 254 West 54th Street in New York. It belongs to the Depression-era experiment of paying artists to make culture public and cheap, advertised the same way a grocer's window was. The printed street address marks it as a real, walk-in local run, not a national campaign.
What to notice
Look at the flat, unmodulated blocks of color - the tell of the hand-pulled silkscreen the WPA shops favored for being cheap, fast, and forgiving of bold areas.
Federal money, a borrowed hall, and a symphony you could walk in off the street to hear.
Provenance
- School
- WPA — Federal Art Project (United States)
- Format
- Theater poster
- Poster published
- Federal Music Project, Works Progress Administration, 1936
- Source
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division · LCCN 98515065
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
