2-D - Unframed (H x W): 51 × 38.1cm (1 ft. 8 1/16 in. × 1 ft. 3 in.)
Type:
ART-Posters, Original Art Quality
Country of Origin:
United States of America
Physical Description:
Offset Photolithograph: Multicolor print of watercolor paintings advertising service to San Francisco. Reproduction of two images separated by a white bar with old American west-type font. The top illustration depicts a city scene with a view of a cable car with a Pepsi logo descending toward the Hyde Street Pier entrance. Boats are docked on the pier and a steamship sails in the water. The bottom illustration represents the Golden Gate Bridge with steamships and sailboats below, and the fog-filled city and the Oakland Bay Bridge in the distance.
Summary:
Fly Now: The National Air and Space Museum Poster Collection
Throughout their history, posters have been a significant means of mass communication, often with striking visual effect. Wendy Wick Reaves, the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery Curator of Prints and Drawings, comments that "sometimes a pictorial poster is a decorative masterpiece-something I can't walk by without a jolt of aesthetic pleasure. Another might strike me as extremely clever advertising … But collectively, these 'pictures of persuasion,' as we might call them, offer a wealth of art, history, design, and popular culture for us to understand. The poster is a familiar part of our world, and we intuitively understand its role as propaganda, promotion, announcement, or advertisement."
Reaves' observations are especially relevant for the impressive array of aviation posters in the National Air and Space Museum's 1300+ artifact collection. Quite possibly the largest publicly-held collection of its kind in the United States, the National Air and Space Museum's posters focus primarily on advertising for aviation-related products and activities. Among other areas, the collection includes 19th-century ballooning exhibition posters, early 20th-century airplane exhibition and meet posters, and twentieth-century airline advertisements.
The posters in the collection represent printing technologies that include original lithography, silkscreen, photolithography, and computer-generated imagery. The collection is significant both for its aesthetic value and because it is a unique representation of the cultural, commercial and military history of aviation. The collection represents an intense interest in flight, both public and private, during a significant period of its technological and social development.
