PSU Collects WPA
January 4-March 5, 2000
Since the 1930s, Penn State has been acquiring works of art that were created under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration, a relief program sponsored by the Federal Government from 1935 to 1943. Printmaking was a vital component of the WPA, and sixteen nationally subsidized graphic workshops—including important centers in New York and Philadelphia—distributed thousands of prints to federally subsidized institutions like Penn State. Long before the founding of a museum of art at University Park, WPA prints were dispersed to a number of different locations across the campus, from the Engineering Building to Food Services. Today many of these prints reside in the permanent collection of the Palmer Museum, though many remain elsewhere throughout the campus. PSU Collects WPAbrings together twenty-five prints from the collections of the Palmer Museum, the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, and the University Libraries in an effort both to highlight the innovative printmaking techniques and varied subject matter of the 1930s and 1940s, and to tell the story of one institution's engagement with the WPA.
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