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Public Domain

Florence Kent and WPA/Federal Art Project, New York City

Design for Living, 1939

1938

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Design for Living, 1939

1938

Physical Qualities Crayon and brush and tusche lithograph with scraping, Sheet: 405 x 583 mm. (15 15/16 x 22 15/16 in.) Image: 291 x 367 mm. (11 7/16 x 14 7/16 in.)
Credit Line The United States General Services Administration, formerly Federal Works Agency, Works Progress Administration, on extended loan to the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Object Number L.1943.9.695
The economic pressures on women and families in the 1930s were tremendous. Joblessness rose among American men and women in the early 1930s, while cultural commentators discouraged women from working outside the home. When white women could not get manufacturing jobs, they worked as housekeepers, displacing women of color from those positions. Managers and school systems fired female employees who got married. Florence Kent’s ironically titled Design for Living, 1939 contrasts the utopian conceptions of 1930s design with the grim realities of a family eating, sleeping, and raising children in a single room insulated with newspaper. Mabel Dwight alluded to domestic isolation and women’s labor in the shadowy tones of Summer Night, in which a solitary figure gazes at a line of laundry out to dry overhead.
Virginia Anderson and Robin Owen Joyce, The Baltimore Museum of Art, "Art/Work: Women Printmakers of the WPA," November 5, 2023 - June 30, 2024.

Inscribed: RECTO: LL margin (stamped in black ink): 'FEDERAL ART PROJECT / NYC WPA'; LC margin (pencil): 'Design for Living, 1939'; LR margin (pencil): 'Florence Kent'; BR Corner (pencil): '24'; BR Corner on stone: 'F.K.'. VERSO: UL (pencil): '#1696 - gr. 2'; C: BMA stamp.

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