Fine Print! Posters

British actor, theatre manager, and wit Herbert Beerbohm Tree famously acknowledged, “It is difficult to live up to one’s posters.” Fine Print! Posters from the Permanent Collection explores just how posters worked to sell audiences on products, people, and ideas. It offers visitors an opportunity to see rarely exhibited European and American posters in the museum’s permanent collection that were produced between the fin-de-siècle French poster movement of the 1890s and the 1972 Olympics. Not only will this be the first time many of these posters have been displayed, but the exhibit also marks the museum’s first large-scale poster show in nearly 50 years. Whether bedecked with the sinuous curves of Art Nouveau, the bold patterns of Art Deco, or the minimalist text and imagery of the International Style, these posters demonstrate how style creates and communicates meaning.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.