WPA in Print

During the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) created numerous programs for economic reform, including four public art programs that operated between 1933 and 1942. The largest of these programs, the Federal Art Project (FAP), provided thousands of jobs for American artists, and made an enormous impact on visual arts in America.

The WPA aimed to make art more accessible to the general public through free community art classes, artist exhibitions, and indefinite loans of WPA artists’ work to public institutions such as libraries, schools, government buildings and museums. The selection of prints in this exhibition are part of a collection of more than seventy works allocated to the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts in 1943 by the Federal Works Agency, now administered by the General Services Administration (GSA). Through these loans, the WPA art program continues to serve as a model public art program today.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website