ART FOR ALL

The Printing Museum has been chosen for the french co-production of the exhibition by the Yale Center for British art (University of Yale, USA) continuing the exchange policy which the Museum has pursued with North America in recent years. Art for all will truly be a first-time event as, outside the United Kingdom, no exhibition has ever been devoted to the spectacular posters that, from the early 20th century onwards, brilliantly decorated the London underground and buses as well as British rail stations.

An essential chapter in the history of Europan design

The exhibition Art for All consists of eighty five posters originating from the Henry S. Hacker collection at the prestigious Yale Center for British Art. Commissioned between 1908 and 1960 from the finest graphic designers and artists of the time by London Transport and the more advanced railway companies, these posters are an essential chapter in the history of graphic design and an important episode in universal art, in the same way as futurism or Art Deco. For the thousands of passengers that were ‘carried away’ by the posters, this was like a wonderful lesson in the history of art, to be followed daily from one rail or tube station to another.

A visionary institutional comunication

By offering its passengers this remarkable artistic approach, London Transport gave a new dimension to its mission as provider of public transport. To arouse desire and curiosity, to generate complicity among millions of travellers unknown to each other, to unite London with its emerging suburbs, such was the challenge successfully met by this firm which was visionary from the point of view of branding institutional communication and durable marketing. Today the topics tackled by the Art for All exhibition have lost none of their relevance at a time when public transport is called upon to play a major role in the development and identity of large cities, and the consideration due to their inhabitants.

Copyright : London Transport Museum, Photo : British Center for Art

The SNCF follows the trend

Eight posters made by contemporary international graphic designers on the occasion of the SNCf’s seventieth anniversary in 2007 will be displayed as a preamble to the Yale collection. The posters were created under the direction of the Anatome design studio and gallery, one of the exhibition’s main partners, by Daniela Haufe and Detlef Fiedler, Teresa Sdralevitch, Peret, Werner Jeker, Philippe Apeloig, Jonathan Barnbrook, Leonardo Sonnoli, Richard Niessen and Esther de Vries.

PUBLICATION:

• A fully illustrated catalogue published by Fage éditions contains contributions from well known American and British specialists on urban and transport art and sociology: Teri J. Edelstein, curator of the exhibition; Neil Harris, emeritus professor of history and history of art at the University of Chicago; Oliver Green, Chief Curator of the London Museum of Transport; Michael Twyman, emeritus professor in the Typography and Graphic Communication department of University of Reading, United Kingdom; Peyton Skipwith, art historian.