The white-collar projects of the WPA, which included the Federal Art Project, employed one third of the women on WPA work relief. Women artists who participated in the Federal Art Project later reported that they were paid the same amount as their male counterparts and did not experience discrimination, an experience unlike that of other women employed by the WPA, who observed the government’s belief that women were not vital to national recovery. However, few of these artists are remembered today, as gender discrimination in the art world returned in the 1950s and '60s, limiting the opportunities available to these women to further pursue careers as artists.          

Elizabeth Olds, Kyra Markham, and Isabel Bishop were important figures of the WPA era. In an oral history interview in 1987, Bishop reported that she was never involved with the WPA. However, art historians frequently group her together with these other artists, as she shared similar concerns. Bishop’s work, including Noon Hour, battles the sexual objectification of women in American art and seeks liberation from the male gaze. As a retired actress, Markham was familiar with the male fantasy of female sexuality. Her print Idiot’s Delight counters the fetishization of women, depicting a male figure gazing longingly at a woman who hardly notices his presence. Markham is remembered today essentially as a party-thrower rather than an artist.           

As one of the founding members of its screen-printing unit, Olds was an important figure within the Graphic Arts Division. An agent for change within the FAP, she advocated for a more democratic visual culture in America through the mass production of prints.

Despite their important societal critique and artistic contributions to the visual culture of the 1930s, these female printmakers are largely forgotten today. Included here are also two works by FSA photographers Dorothea Lange and Berenice Abbott, whose legacies have carried on.   

Margot E. Yale, Class of 2017
Joseph F. McCrindle Intern

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