“Far & Wide: The Golden Age of Travel Posters”
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 12.06.05 | 4:16 PM ET
That’s the name of the current exhibit at the Los Angeles Public Library’s Getty Gallery. I spent some time there yesterday afternoon, checking out the more than 60 promotional posters from the 1920s to the 1940s. They’re gorgeous artifacts of the Art Deco era, though the curators point out that the posters weren’t intended to be artistic. They were made for short-term commercial purposes, printed on cheap paper with a life expectancy of only eight weeks.
Patrons donated the posters to the library, and this is the first time they’ve been displayed. Though major creases are visible in some posters, it’s a mesmerizing exhibit. I fell for the poster advertising the Normandie, “the world’s most perfect ship,” and the one for Royal Dutch Air Lines. Perhaps the most significant poster, however, is a German promotion for the 1936 Olympic Winter Games in Garmisch and Partenkirchen. It’s essentially a piece of propaganda for Hitler’s Nazi regime.
The exhibit runs through May 7, 2006. It can also be found online at the Los Angeles Public Library Web site.
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
