Mildred Waltrip Sites

This site originally displayed four oil on canvas murals, entitled "American Characters," painted by Mildred Waltrip in 1938 with funding from the WPA Federal Art Project. Two of the murals were removed in 1995 and placed in storage after a debate over controversial depictions of African-Americans and American Indians. From the Chicago Tribune story on the controversy: Two 1936 murals at an Oak Park elementary school touched off a 90-minute debate at a school board meeting this week, with some parents and educators demanding the murals be removed, while others argued to keep them as a caution against racial stereotyping. Several...

Mildred Waltrip painted the two-panel, oil-on-canvas mural "Robin Hood" (each panel measuring 5'3" x 6'11") in 1940 for the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project. "Two murals commissioned by the WPA, placed above the twin wooden benches of a niche or inglenook, bracket the entryway into the main building of the hundred-year-old Tudor-style school building. They illustrate episodes from the life of Robin Hood, the legendary English outlaw and popular hero who was said to have been born about 1160. Interwoven among the medieval figures in the first mural are descriptive captions: 'Merry Men of Robin Hood; Richard ye Lion-Hearted, King...