Housing for All, Art for All, Posters for the People

Exhibition

• On view

• The Living Room,
  1st floor

• Free

“I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt, second inaugural address, 1937

No government program has left a more visible legacy on the American landscape than the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration (WPA). Along with the construction of hundreds of federally funded buildings, including the Jane Addams Homes, the program employed thousands of artists.

Many of these artists were tasked with creating promotional posters for the programs and social values of the New Deal. In our Living Room space, we have reproduced a collection of WPA posters centered on public housing. Many make the connection between safe, clean, and affordable housing, and other social issues such as health, safety, and crime. They reflect the underlying New Deal philosophy that each type of governmental support does not work in isolation, but rather in tandem with other public goods such as health, safety, education, and art.