On your wall
The WPA & the Golden Age · See America / Cities & States
Visit the Brookfield Zoo free Thursday, Saturday, Sunday
Carken · Works Progress Administration, 1936
What it is
A 1936 color silkscreen poster designed by Carken for the Works Progress Administration, advertising free admission days at Chicago's Brookfield Zoo. Its subject is a polar bear above a plain schedule of days.
Why it matters
This is a WPA poster - made by government-funded artists during the Depression to sell public institutions to the public. The argument it carries is logistical, not sentimental: the news is not the animal but the free-admission calendar, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, a promise that a family could see the zoo without paying. It belongs to a moment when a screen-printed sign was how a city told working people what was free.
What to notice
Look at how the bear is cut into broad flat white shapes against color - the most economical possible subject for a screen process that rewards large unbroken areas.
Three free days, printed the cheapest way there was, so anyone could come.
Provenance
- School
- WPA — Federal Art Project (United States)
- Designer
- Carken
- Format
- Travel poster
- Poster published
- Works Progress Administration, 1936
- Source
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division · LCCN96501212 (cph.3g04164 / cph.3f05557)
Live trademark
Brookfield Zoo — sold here as history, never adopted into this house’s own branding.
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
