Poster House will present temporary exhibitions as well as a growing permanent collection, all exploring the impact, culture and design of posters, according to the museum’s website, which notes that posters have long bridged the worlds of art and design.
The museum’s curator, Angelina Lippert, highlights the importance of the medium. “The poster brought lush visuals and flashy colors to the street, democratising it, secularising it, and placing it in a position where it neither needed to be venerated or academically studied to be appreciated.”
Lippert highlights the diversity and range the museum hopes to present: “I want the posters of Ghana to have just as much gravitas as those of Toulouse-Lautrec, the zippy designs of 1960s Japan to be held up against the master of Modernity, Müller-Brockmann.”
She told Relaxnews via email that the museum is in negotiations for an exhibition of hand-painted Ghanaian film posters from the 1980s and ’90s as well as mid-century Japanese advertisements, retrospectives of Alphonse Mucha and Lester Beall, and a guest-curated show on race and identity.
From September 20, the raw space set to house the museum (previously home to the much-loved business Tekserve) will hold a month-long exhibition titled “Gone Tomorrow” that will feature posters from some of the iconic, now-closed venues of New York City’s past, from CBGB to Shea Stadium.
Among the highlights will be the posters for The Clash’s concert in Times Square, a screening of “Putney Swope” at Cinema II, a Vignelli subway map “that opted for function over form (and confused everyone in the process),” and the iconic Levy’s Bakery, as well as selections featuring Studio 54, the Electric Circus, the old Penn Station and the city’s first disco, Harlow’s nightclub.
Once the exhibition wraps up, demolition will begin on the venue, with an opening planned for winter 2018.
Find out more about Poster House at posterhouse.org.
