Those interested in art and design will enjoy the variety of images as well as the color and the unique design formats. Viewers of this collection will come to understand why Richard Floethe, the head of the New York poster division stated, the government unwittingly launched a movement to improve the commercial poster and raise it to a true art form. Three special presentations supplement the collection. A short video interview with master silkscreener Tony Velonis, taped in 1994, provides users with the opportunity to hear one of the WPA s poster artists discuss his personal experiences and his craft. Also included is a calendar created in 1938 by the New York City Poster Division to show government officials the skilled work being done by the Federal Art Project staff.
Users can flip the pages of the calendar to view the artwork month by month.
The third special presentation presents collection highlights selected by Library staff to document the depth of the collection, the variety of styles and the content of the WPA posters. Many of the posters shown in the collection highlights have not been widely published. Each poster in the WPA collection has been copied onto slide film to facilitate photographic reproduction orders and to reduce handling of the posters themselves. The slides were scanned to provide digital images for this online collection. About one-third of the slides were digitized in the early 1990s to create an analog videodisc which was used as a reference aid in the Prints and Photographs Division.