Poster House: Manhattan’s New Blockbuster Of A Museum

26.03.2024 - 19:07 / forbes.com

By nature, posters are largely ephemeral items, meant as not much more than quotidian commercial promotions. But very often, in fact, they rise to superb works of art. How gorgeous are those enormous vintage, and now-pricey, advertisements for Dubonnet aperitif or Pernod absinthe. What stunning hand-drawn illustrations promoted mid-century’s glamorous new ski resorts or the chic and exotic destinations that airlines like Air France or Air India promised.

And now, works like all those have thankfully been made a bit more permanent as a proper artistic genre at the Poster House, a new powerhouse of a museum on Manhattan’s West 23rd Street.

If mid-2019 proved to be not the most auspicious of times to open, expect the institution with some 10,000 historic posters in its collection to stop flying under the radar as word soon spreads. If it were located in a second-tier city, the bright and spacious Poster House might well be the local cultural highlight.

So far, the Poster House has paid tribute to artists that range from the great Czech Art Nouveau master Alphonse Mucha with his famous images of his muse, 19th-century actress Sarah Bernhardt, to the mod, mod ’60s and ’70s psychedelic musings of Peter Max. Just wrapped up as well, Art Deco: Commercializing the Avant-Garde presented works that highlighted what the museum called the “first global art movement.”

With other recent exhibits including Baptized By Beefcake: The Golden Age of Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana, or The Sleeping Giant: Posters & The Chinese Economy, and You Won't Bleed Me: How Blaxploitation Posters Defined Cool & Delivered Profits, the Poster House’s show titles are as colorful as the works on its walls.

Just opened, 80 works make up the show Wonder City of the World: New York City Travel Posters that depict the Big Apple long before Milton Glaser’s wonderful “I love NY” image became ubiquitous (through September 8). “Wonder City” was a long forgotten NYC marketing label designed to drum up visitors to the iconic landmarks people have been flocking to see for much of a century, from the Statue of Liberty to Rockefeller Center (an Abrams art book accompanies the show).

Of course, film studios too have always turned to powerful visuals to promote the opening of their latest works. The Anatomy of a Movie Poster: The Work of Dawn Baillie highlights three dozen famous movies whose posters graphic artist Dawn Baillie was commissioned to design (through September 8). While the general public may not know her name, they know nearly every one of the titles in the show, from “Dirty Dancing” and “Silence of the Lambs” to “The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie,” “Little Miss Sunshine” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”

While most visitors have