WPA's Lassen Volcanic National Park Poster

Let me guess…Now that Ken Burn’s National Parkalooza is done with its premiere you have a gaping wilderness void in your life. Just weeks ago, as if out nowhere, your life was filled with stories and images regaling “America’s Best Idea” and the sites it protected, but now you’re back to life before you knew how the bison in Yellowstone came to be saved and how the battle for the Tetons was won/lost. Normally, I would suggest the simple solution of actually visiting a National Park. But with the kids going back to school, the temperatures dropping and most of National Parks scaling their hours back, the opportunities to visit one of our nation’s parks are dwindling. So, the only thing I can suggest is something to hold you over until next summer: Vintage National Park Posters.

I know you’ve seen those old Department of Interior posters begging you to come visit “America’s Treasures” while ironically portraying the uncapturable in a maximum of 5 colors. Well, good news for you National Park and vintage poster buffs: Rangerdoug.com is now the “only source for faithful reproductions of WPA National Park serigraphed posters”, which were originally printed between 1938 and 1941. He also has printed some contemporary posters done in the style of the old WPA posters. Just like baseball cards, collect your favorites. You can choose on style (my favorites are Sequoia, Hawaii and Acadia) or on National Park preference. They have everything from Yosemite to Glacier to Shenandoah to Lassen and you have the choice to order them in poster, postcard or notecard form. Also, available is the 2010 National Parks Poster Art Calender (goodbye swimsuit calender!) from Barnes and Noble.

And, if you’re interested in the history of the WPA, here ya go (from Ranger Doug’s site):

After the stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched a massive bureaucratic structure called the New Deal. This was primarily structured as work relief programs that began in 1933 as the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration or TERA. TERA underwent several organizational changes among them the Public Works or Art Project (PWAP), and the Civilian Works Administration (CWA) finally stabilizing as the Federal Project Number One in 1935. “Federal One” was only one section under the Division of Professional Service Project within the Works Progress Administration or WPA. To further complicate this bureaucratic web, “Fed One” had four subdivisions: The Federal Theater, Music, Writers, and Art Projects.

By 1938 the Federal Art Project or FAP employed artists in all 48 states with a budget of 1% of the WPA’s total budget and was clearly the largest single employer of artists in the United States. Incidentally, this 1% is the model by which most cities today allocate funding for art projects within municipal buildings and is the basis for funding our foundation. Now, just when you thought you had all this memorized, in 1939 the Works Progress Administration kept its WPA acronym but changed its name to the Work Projects Administration for better public recognition!

The efforts of the FAP are mostly known today by the 4000 public murals that have survived on the walls of post offices and schools around the country. Perhaps least known are the posters by their very fragile nature. Between 1935 and 1943 over two million posters were printed by the WPA/FAP. These posters were based on 35,000 designs of which only 2,000 actual posters survive today. It is sad to realize that nearly 33,000 poster designs have been lost forever, representing 99.9% of our public poster art.

The early posters were individually hand painted in one or two colors and were produced in very limited editions, perhaps as few as 50. Poster subjects included art, theater, travel, education, health and safety. About one third of the artists producing these posters resided in New York City; a holdover from Mayor LaGuardia’s “Fish Tuesday” poster project. Because of LaGuardia’s model success, the WPA absorbed the mayor’s poster project in 1935.

In 1934 Anthony Velonis joined the WPA/FAP and introduced the commercial technique of serigraph production. According to Posters of the WPA by Christopher DeNoon, in 1938 the WPA/FAP poster divisions had spread to at least eighteen states with the Chicago poster unit producing 1500 posters per day. With the serigraph commercial process, posters with up to eight or more colors could be efficiently produced.

With the advance of World War II and a concurrent rise of anti-communism, severe limitations were placed on the FAP, namely an annual salary cap of $1000 for artists. Another limitation was the “18 month rule” which limited artists to 18 months employment. This cut out 70% of all artists from the WPA. During the war the FAP was transferred to the Defense Department where the emphasis shifted to war posters. This move severely limited the artistic quality. By 1943 the FAP was disbanded entirely.

The National Parks Series were produced between 1938 beginning with the Grand Teton poster and ending with the Bandelier National Monument poster in 1941. The artists and actual dates of production are unknown. The original posters, distributed to local Chambers of Commerce, were produced for internal marketing only and not for sale.