About the Program:
Join curators Caitlin Condell and Emily M. Orr of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York and Zorian Clayton of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to explore how striking Art Deco posters promoted the public transportation system known as the London Underground.
In this one-of-a-kind program we will see how railway stations became urban art galleries as posters expressed new ideas and styles of modernism in the early twentieth century. This richly illustrated presentation will showcase eye-catching transport posters by E. McKnight Kauffer and by notable women artists including Nancy Smith and Vera Willoughby.
In conjunction with Cooper Hewitt’s recently opened exhibition Underground Modernist: E. McKnight Kauffer, this online presentation will celebrate the provocative work of E. McKnight Kauffer, the leading poster designer for the London Underground in the interwar period.
Even though this program is online, it will include a live PowerPoint––with wonderful images that you will be able to see directly on your computer screen, tablet, or mobile device––as well as a moderated Q&A session with participants.
Can't join us at the time of the live event? No problem! When you register for the live program you are guaranteed to receive a recording of the entire program a few days after the live presentation, which you can watch at a time most convenient for you.
About the Speakers:
Zorian Clayton is Assistant Curator of Prints at the Victoria & Albert Museum, specializing in 19th and 20th century posters and paper ephemera. He has been the co-chair of the V&A LGBTQ+ Working Group for the past eight years, programming numerous special events and research projects on queer art history. Recent publications include contributions to ‘The Poster: A Visual History’ (Thames & Hudson, 2020) and ‘Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism’ (Routledge 2020). He is also a consultant curator in Brussels for a House of European History exhibition, opening spring 2022, exploring 150 years of European identity through the medium of the poster.
Caitlin Condell is the associate curator and head of the Department of Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, where she oversees a collection of nearly 147,000 works on paper dating from the 14th century to the present. She has organized and contributed to numerous exhibitions and publications including Underground Modernist: E. McKnight Kauffer (2021–22), The Modernist French Garden: Designs by the Vera Brothers (2021), After Icebergs (2019–20), Nature—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial (2019-20), Fragile Beasts (2016–17), and How Posters Work (2015) at Cooper Hewitt, and Making Room: The Space Between Two and Three Dimensions (2012–13) at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
Emily M. Orr is the assistant curator of modern and contemporary American design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. She holds a Ph.D. in the History of Design from the Royal College of Art/Victoria & Albert Museum. Her exhibitions at Cooper Hewitt include Underground Modernist: E. McKnight Kauffer (2021–22), Botanical Expressions (2019–21), and Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s (2017). Orr was formerly the Marcia Brady Tucker Fellow in the American Decorative Arts Department at the Yale University Art Gallery (2009–12). She has written articles on a range of design history topics and is the author of Designing the Department Store: Display and Retail at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (Bloomsbury, 2019).
Registration:
How to Register for ADSNY's Web-based programs:
- Click the gold Register button located to the left of the "About the Program" section
- Enter the requested information in the registration form and follow the instructions to pay online and complete your registration
- In a few moments, you will receive an email confirmation of your registration
- You will receive an email with the link and password to join your Zoom event the day of the program.
If you are having difficulty registering for this program please check the settings on your web browser to make sure that cookies and cross-site tracking are enabled. We recommend registering for programs through a desktop. If you need further assistance registering for this event, please email Info@ArtDeco.org, let us know which events you would like to register for, and we will send you an invoice.
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