The Art of Giving: Recent Donations to the NMAI's American Imagist Collection

The National Museum of American Illustration (NMAI) is fortunate to have generous donors who assist the NMAI’s mission to “present the best venue for the public to appreciate the greatest collection of American illustration art,” by gifting artworks of historical and artistic significance. This exhibition highlights the latest gifts added to the collection.

The gifts on display in this exhibition emphasize the wide range of artworks and artifacts received in recent years. Many of these are works of pulp art, so named for the inexpensive paper on which they were printed. Pulp art was published from the 1890s to the 1950s, overlapping the era of the museum’s main collection, and contains numerous sub-genres. From fashion and pin-up illustrations, to covers for western, sci-fi, detective, romance, and crime novels, the scope of genres collected at the NMAI is ever-increasing, due in large part to the benevolence of these donors.

Recent donations include works from the Golden Age of American Illustration and beyond, including Frank Schoonover, Anton Otto Fischer, JF Kernan, Gil Elvgren, Peter Darro, Col. Charles Waterhouse, Stanley Arthurs, Richard Ely, Frank Kelly Freas, Ralph Crosby Smith, Robert McGinnis, and Stuart Kaufman, among others.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.