Painter, Teacher When she directed The Milwaukee Handicraft Project, Elsa Ulbricht was one of the most inspiring people ever to lead an art project for the federal government’s Works Project Administration. It was one of the largest, if not the largest, W.P.A. art-related project in the nation, employing about 5,000 people from Milwaukee mostly women who learned marketable skills for the first time. The program was visited and recognized as an exemplary project by Eleanor Roosevelt. A consummate teacher, Ulbricht taught at Alexander Mueller’s School of Fine and Applied Arts and also the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where she became the chair of the art department. Later she was the director of the Ox-Bow Summer School of Painting in Sagatuck, Michigan. Diverse in her skills, she taught clay modeling, teaching methods, weaving, mechanical drawing, basketry and bookbinding. Recipient of the 2004 Wisconsin Visual Art Lifetime Achievement Awards