Voodoo Macbeth — Federal Theatre Project, 1936
Anthony Velonis, 1936
No print size passed the check for this piece: at 8 x 10 in, Wrong shape: a 20% crop. We would rather show it than sell a soft print.
See pieces like it you can buyA Federal Theatre Project poster announcing the Negro Theatre Unit’s Harlem production of Macbeth — the production now remembered as the "Voodoo Macbeth," directed by a 20-year-old Orson Welles. The FAP’s poster division sold the ticket stub with the same confident flats it sold the library card and the national park — reading and the stage, funded as public good, for an all-Black company mounting Shakespeare in Harlem in 1936. Lettering doing all the work — no illustration, just type built like architecture. The stage, subsidized and unashamed of it.
- Maker
- Anthony Velonis
- Date
- 1936
- Medium of the original
- Theater poster
- Original held by
- Library of Congress
- Credit
- Library of Congress · via Wikimedia Commons
- Rights
- Cleared for print
- Catalogue number
- PA-00861
Before a size goes on sale, the file is measured against it: pixels per inch at that size, how much of the picture a crop would lose, tone and sharpness. A size that fails is not offered, so there is nothing to choose wrong.
| Size | Why |
|---|---|
| 8 x 10 in | Wrong shape: a 20% crop |
| 8 x 12 in | 106 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 11 x 14 in | Wrong shape: a 19% crop |
| 12 x 16 in | Wrong shape: a 15% crop |
| 12 x 18 in | 70 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 16 x 20 in | Wrong shape: a 20% crop |
| 16 x 24 in | 53 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 18 x 24 in | Wrong shape: a 15% crop |
| 20 x 30 in | 42 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 24 x 30 in | Wrong shape: a 20% crop |
| 24 x 36 in | 35 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 30 x 40 in | Wrong shape: a 15% crop |
| 36 x 48 in | Wrong shape: a 15% crop |
| 40 x 60 in | 21 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
- Scanned
- 2026-10-07
- Master file
- 848 x 1,332 px, srgb, sRGB IEC61966-2.1
- Tone
- Darks 17, lights 51 of 255; 0% clipped light, 0% clipped dark
- Colour
- 0% vivid
- Sharpness
- 1.99
- Notes
- Narrow tonal range (16 L*): prints soft and even, as the original reads
- Neutrals lean toward magenta: the paper and varnish of the original, kept as scanned
The Poster Atlas
The national-parks series: the parks belonged to everyone, and so did the art.
All 46 pieces from The Poster Atlas
