Edward Millman (1907–1964) Edward Millman was born in Chicago and studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) under Leon Kroll and John Warner Norton in the early 1930s. He completed numerous murals including one for the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago in 1933. The following year, he traveled to Mexico to study with muralist Diego Rivera, returning to Chicago to become one of the most productive WPA artists in Illinois. He received commissions from both the Illinois Art Project and the more competitive Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture for murals in post offices in Moline (1935) and Decatur, Illinois (1936). He also served as state director of mural projects for the Federal Art Project in Illinois in 1935 and 1936, and completed murals within Chicago public schools and the Chicago Bureau of Water. (His mural for the Lucy Flower Academy High School, Women’s Contribution to American Progress, 1940, was restored in 1996.) He taught fresco painting at Hull House in Chicago from 1939–42 and also worked in lithography.

He also taught at Indiana University, Washington University in St. Louis, University of Arkansas, Cornell University, and Layton School of Art. He was artist-in-residence for one year at the Art Institute of Chicago, and professor of art at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute from 1956 until his death in Woodstock, New York, in 1964.