Missed our conversation with Nicholas Lowry and Angelina Lippert? Register here to watch this episode of PRINT Book Club.
Until the launch of Wonder City of the World (book and exhibition), there had never been an exhibition about New York City travel posters. We found this hard to believe! In fact, no one has written a book about them, either. Not even PRINT’s prolific design history hunter, Steven Heller. Poster House wanted to rectify this.
So, Nicholas Lowry (Poster House board member, writer, and antiques expert—you may know his face from Antiques Roadshow) and Angelina Lippert (chief curator for Poster House) set out to design an exhibition on this poster design genre. Abrams then proposed a book. The sheer amount of posters worthy of our discussion and appreciation wouldn’t fit on Poster House’s walls—the book became a great vehicle to explore this fascinating slice of design history.
The book’s name comes from one of the many monikers given to New York City throughout its history as a destination: for immigrants seeking better lives, for droves coming to the 1939 World’s Fair, for the thousands of tourists who’ve flocked to the city’s sights for centuries. The original name for the exhibition was “Mythmaking and the Metropolis”—we love this, for the record!—however, the book’s editor wanted to simplify and so Wonder City, the book, was born.
Wonder is appropriate. The collection offers an idealized portrait of New York City, accompanied by essays on the posters’ design, the artists (if known; most are not), and the artists’ representation of the city. Our discussion included all kinds of fun facts and little-known details about New York and the history of advertising the city all over the globe. The topic proved to be the ultimate rabbit hole for Lowry.
I haven’t met a rabbit hole I haven’t wanted to jump down.
Nicholas Lowry, writer and curator
If you’d like to go down your own rabbit hole on this topic, register here to watch the recording of our fascinating discussion with Lowry and Lippert.
Haven’t purchased a copy of Wonder City of the World: New York Travel Posters? You can order one here.
If you are in New York, visit the Poster House exhibition, which features a selection of these incredible artifacts of design history. Wonder City of the World is on view until September 8. Poster House’s upcoming exhibitions include everything from Lester Beall to the London Underground to the Munich Olympics, the NYC subway, Nike, and more. Learn more at posterhouse.org.
See you next month!