The WPA & the Golden Age · See America / Cities & States
The world wants new knowledge - new skills
Work Projects Administration Poster Collection, 1937
What it is
A 1937 WPA silkscreen - verso stamp December 4, 1937 - announcing free adult education classes, built around a single image of the earth.
Why it matters
The composition is stripped to one sphere and one headline, which is what the medium rewarded: every additional colour meant another hand-cut stencil and another pass through the screen. Its promise of retraining reads as plainly now as it did to an unemployed reader in the eighth year of the Depression.
What to notice
The earth itself as the client, and retraining as the terms of employment.
Made by artists on the public payroll — art the country already owned.
Provenance
- School
- WPA — Federal Art Project (United States)
- Format
- One-sheet
- Poster published
- Work Projects Administration Poster Collection, 1937
- Source
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division · 98517175
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
