Women’s Work: The WPA Milwaukee Handicraft Project By Jacqueline M. Schweitzer, Honorary Curator of American History
This is the inspiring story of a work program that brought fame to Milwaukee while breaking gender and color barriers during the Great Depression, told through a collection of toys, textiles, books, and photographs at the Milwaukee Public Museum. The Milwaukee Handicraft Project (MHP), a Works Projects Administration (WPA) program operating from 1935 until 1942, employed over 5,000 women and minorities. The Museum’s large collection reflects the ingenuity and skillful craftsmanship of MHP products. The story behind their design and creation is an uplifting tale of empowerment during one of the darkest periods of our nation’s history.
Resources:
2012 Milwaukee WPA Handicraft Project Online Exhibit Lois M. Quinn University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, lquinn@uwm.edu
Celeste Contreras is a Xicana - Indigenous artist who works in mixed mediums to share stories of ceremony, culture and tradition. Her work includes illustrations, print, book arts and animation. Her research includes storytelling through images and objects, exploring the condition of the book and book form and recalling the palimpsests of intergenerational trauma from migration and genocide of ancestors to relearning and decolonizing through ceremony. Currently enrolled as an MFA student at UW-Milwaukee’s Peck School of the Arts, focused in Print and Narrative Form and holds a BFA from Alverno College. Contreras was the 2019 Gathering Art, Stories and Place Artist-in-Resident with the Milwaukee Public Library where she published a 200 edition box set of artists’ books, Artist in the Library, that will be distributed throughout libraries in Milwaukee and libraries around the country. Contreras is based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where she lives with her husband and cats in the Riverwest neighborhood.
www.celestecontreras.com
Email: celestazuchitl@gmail.com
Instagram: celestazuchitl.arte
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