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The WPA & the Golden Age · See America / Cities & States
Visit Brookside Zoo free
Carken · Works Progress Administration, 1937
What it is
A 1937 color silkscreen travel poster for Brookside Zoo, credited to the designer Carken and produced under the Works Progress Administration. A leopard stretches across a horizontal field above the pitch to visit.
Why it matters
The WPA put unemployed artists to work making posters that sold civic life back to a broke public, and municipal recreation was part of that pitch. Here the argument is bluntly economic: the zoo costs nothing, a small dignity offered in the middle of the Depression. It is also one of the few WPA zoo posters composed wide rather than upright.
What to notice
Look at the leopard's spots - reduced to a flat, repeating rhythm the silkscreen could actually print, not rendered as fur.
Spectacle, priced for a decade that had nothing to spend.
Provenance
- School
- WPA — Federal Art Project (United States)
- Designer
- Carken
- Format
- Travel poster
- Poster published
- Works Progress Administration, 1937
- Source
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division · LCCN95514298 (cph.3g03395)
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
