FDR Urged Regular Dental Exams
Dr. Hadaegh shares a vintage WPA poster urging regular dental exams.
Asserting in his Inaugural Address, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt enacted a series of economic programs intended to get America back on its feet. Collectively these efforts were known as “The New Deal.”
These programs included commissioning artists to promote public events and notices in the areas of education, art, culture – and to the point of this post, health. The resulting artwork is not only beautiful in its own right, but also serves as a window into a very different time.
By the People, For the People: Posters from the WPA, 1936-1943 is a spectacular collection of 908 boldly colored and graphically diverse original posters produced from 1936 to 1943 as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Of the 2,000 WPA posters known to exist, the Library of Congress’s collection of more than 900 is the largest.
These striking silkscreen, lithograph, and woodcut posters were designed to publicize health and safety programs; cultural programs including art exhibitions, theatrical, and musical performances; travel and tourism; educational programs; and community activities in seventeen states and the District of Columbia.
The posters were made possible by one of the first U.S. Government programs to support the arts and were added to the Library’s holdings in the 1940s.