Poster House

Remote Vibrant Verbal Description Tour: The Sleeping Giant
2020-12-17 16:00 - 17:30 (America/New_York)
Every month, Poster House offers Vibrant Verbal Description Tours specifically for the low vision and blind community. Explore one of the museum’s shows with an experienced educator trained in the art of verbal description and learn more about the history of printed posters.
Due to the current public health crisis surrounding COVID-19, we’re bringing our description tours online through teleconference. These tours are led by our Chief Curator, allowing you intimate access to the items in our current shows.
This tour will focus on The Sleeping Giant: Posters & The Chinese Economy, an exhibition currently on display at the museum which covers approximately 100 years of Chinese graphic design.
Please email access@posterhouse.org or call 917.722.2439 x413 by December 15 to sign up for this event. You will be emailed poster images for reference as well as information about accessing the teleconference the morning of the virtual tour.
Tours start promptly and will last approximately 90 minutes with questions.
For a complete list of our Access Tours, click the Access filter at the top of our Events page, call 917.722.2439 x413 or email access@posterhouse.org. Poster House will also strive to accommodate any outside accessibility tour requests given two week’s notice.

Lippert & Lowry: Fireside Chats
2020-12-16 20:00 - 21:00
Join everyone’s favorite blazer-loving poster duo for a Fireside Chat on Instagram Live!
Angelina Lippert, our Chief Curator, and Nicholas Lowry, Director of Swann Auction Galleries, are two of the biggest personalities in the poster world. And they also happen to be best buddies! So why not spend your evening hanging out with them? There’ll even be a real fireplace!
Ask questions, chime in, make requests, play along—no poster is off limits for these two!
Tonight they will be going over their favorite cabaret and showgirl posters!
Just follow @posterhousenyc and @swanngalleries and tune in at 8pm for the best poster entertainment on the internet!*
*This event has passed. Watch archived Fireside Chats on the “Our Friends” Highlight on our Instagram page!

Virtual Talk with Bowne & Co: Letterpress in New York City
2020-12-14 18:30 - 20:00
Poster House is thrilled to partner with Robert Wilson, Art Director at Bowne & Co., of the South Street Seaport Museum, for an evening dedicated to the early history of letterpress printing in New York City. In this presentation, he will explore a number of production processes that built the visual landscape of New York, with special attention paid to the typographic trends of broadsides and handbills from the 19th century. At Bowne & Co., artifacts from the museum’s working collection are used in a contemporary practice, preserving the skills and traditions of 19th-century letterpress printing. Join us on a journey of lessons learned at the press, questions warmly welcomed!
Rob Wilson is a designer, educator, and letterpress printer. As Art Director of Bowne & Co., he is responsible for the general operations of custom printing, education, public programming, as well as the overall maintenance and management of the printing history collection of 34 printing presses and over 2,000 cases of moveable type. He teaches graphic design and typography at Pace University and Pratt Institute.
This online event will be hosted on Zoom with attendees cameras off. Closed Captioning will be provided. Questions about access? Please email Salvador Muñoz, Public Programs Manager, at Salvador@posterhouse.org

Virtual Archives Tour
2020-12-10 18:30 - 19:30
Join Poster House’s Collections Manager, Melissa Walker, for a look behind the scenes at the museum’s archives!
This freewheeling glimpse into the museum’s permanent collection will cover everything from our Living Archive project to vintage posters; contemporary advertising campaigns to recent acquisitions. Come learn about the museum’s collecting mission and ask Melissa about all things collections-related!
Tickets: $3
Members & Students: Free!
Every Archives Tour will be different, focusing on new or unexplored parts of our permanent collection.

Winter Break: Ski Posters & Après Ski Cocktails
2020-12-09 19:00 - 21:00
Our Posters & Cocktails parties keep getting rave reviews, so we’re rounding out the year with one more night of great design and mixology!
Our Chief Curator will once again be hosting Nicholas Lowry of Swann Auction Galleries and Don Spiro of The Green Fairy Society over Zoom as they take us on a much-needed winter holiday full of ski posters and après ski drinks.
After Don warms us up with our first cocktail, Nicholas will jetset around the world, introducing us to all the major winter ski resort posters in history. As our glasses empty, Don will help us create the perfect ski chalet atmosphere with four more amazing beverages to warm our spirits against the winter chill.
Tickets:
Early Bird (purchased before Nov 1): Free!
General Registration: $3
Ingredients:
STINGER
Brandy
Crème de menthe
Ice
Rocks glass
Barspoon
OLD PAL
Rye
Campari
Dry vermouth
Ice
Rocks glass
Barspoon
EGG NOG
1 egg
Brown sugar or demerara syrup
Heavy cream
Whole milk
Jamaican Rum (or other, aged, rich rum)
Bourbon
Optional Apple brandy
Ice
Shaker and strainer
Optional ground nutmeg
Wine glass
HOT BUTTERED RUM
5oz unsalted butter
2 ounces dark or aged rum
Honey or brown sugar
Boiling water
A heat proof glass mug
Barspoon
Optional: ground cinnamon, ground cloves, ground nutmeg, ground allspice, salt, pepper, star anise, vanilla syrup, or other spice of your choice.
HOT TODDY
A brown spirit of your choice: rum, bourbon, Scotch, etc…
Fresh lemon juice
Honey, simple syrup, or sugar
Cinnamon stick
Orange
Boiling water
A heat proof glass mug
Optional: Ginger, bitters, or other spice of your choice.

Instagram Takeover: Molly Crabapple
2020-12-07 09:00 - 17:00
Poster House is dedicated to celebrating all voices within the poster community. In an effort to share with our audience the widest array of poster talent, we are partnering with numerous young designers around the world to create Instagram Takeovers—full days on our Instagram account in which up and coming graphic artists give us a personalized peek inside their poster-making world.
Once a month, head to our Instagram to see these amazing contemporary designers. Get special access inside their studios, hear their philosophy on how posters work, peek at their latest poster creations, and ask them questions!
This Monday, we are featuring the incomparable Molly Crabapple! Molly is an artist and writer in New York. She is the author of two books, Drawing Blood and Brothers of the Gun, (with Marwan Hisham), which was long-listed for a National Book Award in 2018. Her reportage has been published in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. Her art is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art. She is currently a 2020 New America Fellow and a 2020 Bard Fellow at the Brooklyn Public Library.
Instagram handle: @mollycrabapple

Summer 2021 Internship Info Session
2020-12-03 18:30 - 20:00
Calling NYC-based undergraduate and graduate students!
Join Poster House for an information session about our upcoming Summer 2021 Internship opportunities. Our internship mentors will be on hand to share insights into the positions available this summer and answer any outstanding questions.
Will you be our next Teen Program Intern? Can you see yourself spinning corporate membership gold as our Corporate Membership Intern? Plan on making our collections more accessible as our Collections Intern? Or will you be pitching your very own design project for our Pitch Your Own Design Internship? For more information, please visit our Summer 2021 Internship page.
Registration is free, questions are encouraged, and all are welcome! There will be a raffle of goodies from the Shop for participants.

Collecting Swiss Posters: An Evening With Tom Strong
2020-12-03 18:30 - 20:00
No one knows a poster niche as well as its most passionate collectors. When creating The Swiss Grid, Poster House worked closely with Swiss poster collector Tom Strong, crafting a narrative based on his extraordinary posters.
Tonight, join Tom Strong in conversation with Chief Curator Angelina Lippert as he gives you unfettered access to his collecting journey, from when he first fell in love with Swiss design to how he chooses new Swiss posters being made today.
Tickets:
General Registration: $3
Members & Students: Free!
This program is in partnership with Consulate General of Switzerland in New York.

Lippert & Lowry: Fireside Chats
2020-12-02 20:00 - 21:00
Join everyone’s favorite blazer-loving poster duo for a Fireside Chat on Instagram Live!
Angelina Lippert, our Chief Curator, and Nicholas Lowry, Director of Swann Auction Galleries, are two of the biggest personalities in the poster world. And they also happen to be best buddies! So why not spend your evening hanging out with them? There’ll even be a real fireplace!
Ask questions, chime in, make requests, play along—no poster is off limits for these two!
Tonight, they will be looking at their favorite film posters!
Just follow @posterhousenyc and @swanngalleries and tune in at 8pm for the best poster entertainment on the internet!*
*This event has passed. Watch archived Fireside Chats on the “Our Friends” Highlight on our Instagram page!

A Conversation With Amos Kennedy
2020-12-01 18:30 - 20:00
Join Poster House‘s Chief Curator in conversation with letterpress printer Amos Paul Kennedy Jr.
As the subject of the museum’s first mini-exhibition in its new entrance display space, Amos’s work has become a favorite of visitors of the past few months. His posters exemplify a modern approach to letterpress printing, combining sharp wit with layers of brilliant color. No two posters are ever exactly alike, underscoring their utilitarian purpose of communicating to the viewer information about an event or idea.
Tonight, Amos will speak about the letterpress process, his approach to design, and how he became involved in the wonderful world of posters.
Questions from the audience are strongly encouraged.

Members-Only Viewing
2020-11-19 19:00 - 20:30
Forget about boring museum tours! Our Chief Curator is known for her relatable, funny anecdotes and casual style. Join her on an introduction to our first mini-exhibition dedicated to Amos Kennedy, as well as a tour of our permanent Poster History Timeline where she’ll dispel poster myths, share hot poster gossip, and give you a new appreciation for the wild world of posters.
Questions and fabulous attire are encouraged!
We will be taking temperatures of all guests upon arrival, and requiring masks and social distancing throughout the event. In order to ensure proper social distancing, we will also be providing headsets with disposable earbuds.
This viewing is free and members-only.

Angelina Lippert is the Chief Curator of Poster House in New York City, the first museum in the United States dedicated to the history of the poster. She holds an MA in the art of the Russian Avant-Garde from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and a BA in theology and art history from Smith College. She is the author of The Art Deco Poster, and has lectured at SVA, The Cooper Union, Columbia University, and The Sotheby’s Institute of Art. She is also a contributing writer to The Muse by the Clio Awards, where she focuses on the history of advertising design. She is on the Board of Directors of the Ephemera Society of America, and is an editor for Vintage Poster magazine.

Stories & Recipes From Nom Wah
2020-11-19 18:00 - 19:00
Over the past few months, Poster House has teamed up with Nom Wah, one of New York’s oldest dim sum houses, in honor of the exhibition The Sleeping Giant: Posters & The Chinese Economy.
For our final event in the series, join Nom Wah’s owner, Wilson Tang, and Joshua David Stein, co-author of the newly released cookbook The Nom Wah Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from 100 Years at New York City’s Iconic Dim Sum Restaurant for an incredible evening of cooking and storytelling. Hear the stories behind many of these easy-to-prepare, family-focused dishes, learn about Chinese-American food culture, and watch as Wilson demonstrates one of the many fabulous recipes in this landmark cookbook.
Both Joshua and Wilson will be taking questions from the audience. Feel free to cook along with your copy (available through the Poster House Shop) or, if you’re in NYC, order the meal directly from Nom Wah so you can experience these authentic flavors directly from the chefs themselves. You can also purchase the cookbook from our shop.

Free Early Bird Tickets Available Til Nov 8!

Remote Vibrant Verbal Description Tour: The Swiss Grid
2020-11-19 16:00 - 17:30
Every month, Poster House offers Vibrant Verbal Description Tours specifically for the low vision and blind community. Explore one of the museum’s shows with an experienced educator trained in the art of verbal description and learn more about the history of printed posters.
Due to the current public health crisis surrounding COVID-19, we’re bringing our description tours online through teleconference. These tours are led by our Chief Curator, allowing you intimate access to the items in our current shows.
This tour will focus on The Swiss Grid, an exhibition currently on display at the museum which features the parred-down, geometry-based designs of the 1950s.
Please email access@posterhouse.org or call 917.722.2439 x413 by November 17 to sign up for this event. You will be emailed poster images for reference as well as information about accessing the teleconference the morning of the virtual tour.
Tours start promptly and will last approximately 90 minutes with questions.
For a complete list of our Access Tours, click the Access filter at the top of our Events page, call 917.722.2439 x413 or email access@posterhouse.org. Poster House will also strive to accommodate any outside accessibility tour requests given two week’s notice.

Virtual Talk: Italian Propaganda and The Art of Political Indoctrination
2020-11-18 18:30 - 20:00
Intended to be on view from March 4 through April 17, 2020, at the Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, Propaganda:The Art of Political Indoctrination in Italy, 1902-1950 was only open for a few days before the citywide shut down led to its premature closure.
Poster House is therefore thrilled that it can offer a special evening over Zoom with curator Nicola Lucchi, who will not only guide us through the amazing posters in the exhibition (all on loan from the incredible Fondazione Cirulli in Bologna, Italy), but also talk about the exhibition-building process and research behind this fabulous show.
Tickets: $3
Members & Students: Free!

The Art of Political Indoctrination sought to expose the visual language of insidious political communication. Focusing on Italian case studies from the turbulent first half of the country’s 20th century, the exhibition exposed how modernist aesthetics, mass communication, and marketing techniques mustered support for political causes that frequently encompassed totalitarian endeavors. Considered together, these posters and design ephemera alert us to the need of recognizing political rhetoric in all its forms, and in all eras, including the present one.
Nicola Lucchi is a teacher of History and Philosophy at La Scuola d’Italia Guglielmo Marconi in New York. He holds a doctorate in Italian Studies from NYU (2016) and has previously taught at Dickinson College and Queens College, CUNY. An expert on Italian modernism with a focus on interwar visual culture, Nicola has published scholarly articles and catalog essays on Futurism, Bruno Munari, and Eugenio Montale. During Spring 2020, Nicola curated an exhibition on propaganda art at NYU’s Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, titled Propaganda. The Art of Political Indoctrination, made possible by a collaboration with Fondazione Massimo e Sonia Cirulli (Bologna, Italy).

College Night: The Future of Museums
2020-11-17 19:00 - 20:30
Over the past year, museums have worked to find footing within many complex and widespread challenges, including a global pandemic and the ongoing civil rights movement. As museums adapt to meet the world where it is today, we are tasked with considering how museums can continue to change and grow into the future, and who their audience and supporters are. How do you imagine the museum of the future, and how can we build it together? In our final roundtable of the season, these are the questions that will be discussed by our esteemed panelists including curator and design historian Michelle Millar Fisher, cultural organizer and curator La Tanya Autry, and educator and writer Nico Wheadon.
Michelle Millar Fisher is a curator and an architecture and design historian. The recipient of an M.A. and an M.Phil in Art History from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, she received an M.Phil from and is currently completing her doctorate in architectural history at The Graduate Center at the City University of New York (CUNY). She is currently the Ronald C. and Anita L. Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
As a cultural organizer in the visual arts, La Tanya S. Autry centers social justice and public memory in her work. In addition to co-creating The Art of Black Dissent, an interactive program that promotes public dialogue about the African-American liberation struggle, she co-produced #MuseumsAreNotNeutral, an initiative that exposes the fallacies of the neutrality claim and calls for an equity-based transformation of museums and the Social Justice and Museums Resource List, a crowd-sourced bibliography. Autry has curated exhibitions and organized programs at Yale University Art Gallery, moCa Cleveland, Artspace New Haven, Mississippi Museum of Art, Tougaloo College, and the Crane Art Center.
Nico Wheadon is an adjunct assistant professor of Art History and Africana Studies at Barnard College, and Professional Practices at Hartford Art School. Wheadon is an independent writer with her first manuscript, On Museum Citizenship: A Toolkit for Radical Art Practice, Pedagogy and Participation, slated for publication by the American Alliance of Museums Press and Rowman & Littlefield Publishers in 2021. She’s the former Director of Public Programs and Community Engagement at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2014-2019), and Curatorial Director of Rush Arts Gallery (2007-2010). Wheadon holds an MA in Creative & Cultural Entrepreneurship from Goldsmith’s College, and a BA in Art-Semiotics from Brown University.
College Night aims to provide real resources to students who are interested in pursuing careers in art, design, and museums, with an emphasis on breaking down the pathways and barriers that can intimidate young professionals when planning for their futures. Our student programming provides professional development opportunities such as a lecture series of museum professionals across departments and throughout the world of design, as well as creative workshops, resumé reviews, and direct mentorship with our museum staffers.
College Night moved online in March of 2020, and is free of charge. To learn about the perks of becoming a Student Member at Poster House, please visit our Join page.

Virtual Talk: A Stupendous All-Star Negro Motion Picture
2020-11-16 18:30 - 20:00
Join designer and educator Kelly Walters as she virtually guides guests through Black film posters from the Jim Crow through Blaxploitation eras. In this talk, she will share her visual process in the exploration of linguistic phrases, typography, and visual representations of African Americans in this era of film poster design. She will be touching on the significance of language like that found the title of this talk in the relation to its historical context.
In preparation for the event, viewers may wish to check out Walters’s Afrotectopia presentation where she expands on these ideas.

General Registration: $3
Members & Students: Free!
Kelly Walters is a designer and educator whose work investigates the intersection of Black cultural vernacular in mainstream media. Her research practice is deeply intertwined with the molding and shaping of cultural identity, and an investment in making visible historical visual expressions that reclaim a Black voice within the field of graphic design. In her independent design studio Bright Polka Dot, she produces print and digital ephemera for publications, exhibitions, and social campaigns. She is an Assistant Professor and Associate Director of the BFA Communication Design program at Parsons School of Design at The New School.

Virtual Focus on Ephemera: An Evening with Display
2020-11-12 18:30 - 20:00
Spend an evening with Greg D’Onofrio and Patricia Belen, co-founders of Display, Graphic Design Collection as they present ephemera (c. 1948–69) from their personal collection, some of which is currently on loan to The Swiss Grid. From their unique point of view, they’ll reveal the history and stories behind the artifacts and their designers and discuss how the post-war visual vocabulary of Swiss Graphic Design played an influential role beyond Switzerland.
Partners Greg D’Onofrio and Patricia Belen are designers, writers, and educators. They have curated, lectured, and authored essays on twentieth-century American, Italian, and Swiss modern graphic design history. Greg teaches the history of graphic design at the School of Visual Arts and Cooper Union and is co-author (with Steven Heller) of The Moderns: Midcentury American Graphic Design (Abrams Books, 2017). Patricia is a teaching artist-in-residence in graphic design at Fordham University.
Tickets: $3
Members & Students: Free!

Lippert & Lowry: Fireside Chats
2020-11-11 20:00 - 21:00
Join everyone’s favorite blazer-loving poster duo for a Fireside Chat on Instagram Live!
Angelina Lippert, our Chief Curator, and Nicholas Lowry, Director of Swann Auction Galleries, are two of the biggest personalities in the poster world. And they also happen to be best buddies! So why not spend your evening hanging out with them? There’ll even be a real fireplace!
Ask questions, chime in, make requests, play along—no poster is off limits for these two!
Tonight, they will be focusing on their favorite automobile posters!
Just follow @posterhousenyc and @swanngalleries and tune in at 8pm for the best poster entertainment on the internet!*
*This event has passed. Watch archived Fireside Chats on the “Our Friends” Highlight on our Instagram page!

Virtual Archives Tour
2020-11-10 18:30 - 19:30
Join Poster House’s Collections Manager, Melissa Walker, for a look behind the scenes at the museum’s archives!
This freewheeling glimpse into the museum’s permanent collection will cover everything from our Living Archive project to vintage posters; contemporary advertising campaigns to recent acquisitions. Come learn about the museum’s collecting mission and ask Melissa about all things collections-related!
Every Archives Tour will be different, focusing on new or unexplored parts of our permanent collection.
Registration is Free!

Collecting Chinese Posters: An Evening With Marc H. Choko
2020-11-09 18:30 - 19:30
Poster House is thrilled to host a conversation with esteemed poster expert Marc H. Choko as he shares his experience collecting vintage and contemporary Chinese posters.
Marc will reflect on when he first fell in love with Chinese graphic design and how he built his collection through personal connections in the country. He discusses the rapid rise of this poster market and how that impacted the field and his collecting practices, especially as China opened more of its economy to the rest of the world. Much of Marc’s incredible collection is on loan to our current exhibition The Sleeping Giant: Posters & The Chinese Economy, which he co-curated.
Tickets:
General Registration: $3
Members & Students: Free!
Marc H. Choko is a professor, author, lecturer, and exhibition curator in the field of poster and graphic design. He is a professor emeritus at the School of Design of Université du Québec à
Montréal, where he taught from 1977 to 2018. He was director of the Design Centre from 1999 to 2008, and a research director at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) Urbanization, Culture, and Society from 1985 to 2005. He holds a baccalaureate in Architecture (1973) and a master in Planning from University of Montréal (1976), and a doctorate in Urban Studies from Université Paris VIII (1981).

AIGA Design Conference: Alphonse Mucha
2020-11-09 17:00 - 18:00
Poster House is proud to be sponsoring @AIGADesign’s upcoming 2020 #AIGADesignConf from November 9 to November 14. With a theme of building bridges, attendees from around the world will be building connections with fellow designers, do-ers, and thinkers while discussing design’s biggest challenges.
To help kick off their 20th anniversary conference, our Chief Curator, Angelina Lippert, will be speaking about Alphonse Mucha‘s Paris period and the many contributions this designer made to modern advertising.
Ticket holders will be able to hear her and a host of other impressive speakers on all aspects of design practice and history.

Walking Tour of Historic Chinatown Signage
2020-11-05 18:30 - 20:00
Join design historian Thomas Rinaldi as he guides you on this 90-minute walking tour of Chinatown. Focusing on the history of signage in the area, we will make stops to admire Chinatown’s surviving historic signs and discuss how they fit into the evolutionary history of commercial signage more broadly, exploring threads of graphic design and technology that have collaborated to produce this quintessential urban commercial landscape.
Thomas Rinaldi is the co-author of the book Hudson Valley Ruins: Forgotten Landmarks of an American Landscape, published by the University Press of New England in 2006, and the author of New York Neon, published by W.W. Norton in 2012. His photographs have been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, The New York Observer, Westchester Magazine, CNN Online, and elsewhere, and have been exhibited at the Municipal Art Society of New York and at the New York State Museum in Albany.
NOTE: This tour does NOT begin at Poster House. You will be emailed the starting location one week before the event. Guests should be prepared to walk on uneven, crowded streets for 90 minutes without seating.
Tickets:
Poster House Members: $15
General Public: $20

Instagram Takeover: Shehzil Malik
2020-11-02 09:00 - 17:00
Poster House is dedicated to celebrating all voices within the poster community. In an effort to share with our audience the widest array of poster talent, we are partnering with numerous young designers around the world to create Instagram Takeovers—full days on our Instagram account in which up and coming graphic artists give us a personalized peek inside their poster-making world.
Once a month, head to our Instagram to see these amazing contemporary designers. Get special access inside their studios, hear their philosophy on how posters work, peek at their latest poster creations, and ask them questions!
This Monday, we are featuring the illustrator and designer Shehzil Malik. Malik is a designer/illustrator with a focus on human rights, feminism, and South Asian identity. She is a book illustrator and leads a studio that works on social impact projects and collaborations in fashion design, publication design, and branding. Her work has been featured in CNN, DW, BBC, and with clients including Penguin Random House, Oxfam, New York Times, and Google. She is a Fulbright scholar with an MFA in Visual Communication Design from the Rochester Institute of Technology and is part of the International Development Innovation Network (IDIN).
Instagram handle: @shehzilm
Pronouns: She/ Her

Virtual Talk: Poster Art in the Mao Era
2020-10-26 18:30 - 20:00
Join historian Alfreda Murck as she guides guests virtually through The Sleeping Giant, focusing on posters produced during the Mao era. She will unpack these dynamic works of graphic design, exploring elements of politics, famine, and warfare that led to the Cultural Revolution. This is a unique opportunity to examine and discuss these pieces with a leader in the field.
Tickets:
Early Bird (purchased before Oct 10): Free!
General Registration: $3
A historian of Chinese visual culture, Alfreda Murck lived in Asia as a student and professional for more than two decades. In China from 1997 to 2013, she worked at the Palace Museum and taught at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and at Peking University. Besides various articles on Chinese painting, she authored a book titled Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle Art of Dissent (Harvard University Asia Center, 2000). In the flea markets of Beijing she collected other people’s castoffs, including objects related to the Pakistani mangoes that Mao gave to workers, which led to the exhibition Mao’s Golden Mangoes and the Cultural Revolution (Rietberg Museum Zurich, 2013). Prior to living in Asia, Freda was Associate Curator of Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum. She received her PhD from Princeton University in 1995.
This program is co-presented by China Institute. By signing up for this program, you agree to be added to China Institute’s mailing list.

Instagram Takeover: Colin Laurel
2020-10-26 09:00 - 17:00
Poster House is dedicated to celebrating all voices within the poster community. In an effort to share with our audience the widest array of poster talent, we are partnering with numerous young designers around the world to create Instagram Takeovers—full days on our Instagram account in which up and coming graphic artists give us a personalized peek inside their poster-making world.
Once a month, head to our Instagram to see these amazing contemporary designers. Get special access inside their studios, hear their philosophy on how posters work, peek at their latest poster creations, and ask them questions!
This Monday, we are featuring the illustrator and designer Colin Laurel. Laurel is a Black trans illustrator working in editorial, licensing, posters, and social justice. Throughout his work, he explores identity, culture, mental health, and advocates for self-help through making art. Colin hopes that his practice will inspire others to use creative solutions as a means for therapy and liberation. He has worked with Adobe, the New York Times, Icebreaker, Media Res Studio, UC Berkeley, Poetry Foundation, and organizations such as Forward Together, Trans Justice Funding Project, and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. He graduated from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2015 with a BFA in Design Arts. He lives in Portland and adores his cat.
Name: Colin Laurel
Pronouns: He/him/his
IG: @folklaurel

Virtual Archives Tour
2020-10-22 18:30 - 19:30
Join Poster House’s Collections Manager, Melissa Walker, for a look behind the scenes at the museum’s archives!
This freewheeling glimpse into the museum’s permanent collection will cover everything from our Living Archive project to vintage posters; contemporary advertising campaigns to recent acquisitions. Come learn about the museum’s collecting mission and ask Melissa about all things collections-related!
Tickets: $3
Members & Students: Free!

Lippert & Lowry: Fireside Chats
2020-10-21 20:00 - 21:00
Join everyone’s favorite blazer-loving poster duo for a Fireside Chat on Instagram Live!
Angelina Lippert, our Chief Curator, and Nicholas Lowry, Director of Swann Auction Galleries, are two of the biggest personalities in the poster world. And they also happen to be best buddies! So why not spend your evening hanging out with them? There might even be a real fireplace!
Ask questions, chime in, make requests, play along—no poster is off limits for these two!
This evening, the dynamic duo will be discussing all this nautical with a night dedicated to ship posters!
Just follow @posterhousenyc and @swanngalleries and tune in at 8pm for the best poster entertainment on the internet!*
*This event has passed. Watch archived Fireside Chats on the “Our Friends” Highlight on our Instagram page!

Grad School Night
2020-10-20 19:00 - 20:30
When making any decision about your education, it can help to consult a wide array of resources and perspectives. Whether you are considering graduate school or are a current graduate student, this evening is for you. In this program, you will hear from multiple speakers in the design world who hold Masters Degrees, including Poster House Director Julia Knight, professor and artist Clara Lieu, private art consultant Sarah Stein-Sapir, and curator, educator and filmmaker Katherine Cheairs, who will all discuss their educational journeys and what they learned about the cause and effect of going through graduate programs.
The final half hour of this program will feature the Poster House Education Team, who will lead participants in a professional development session focusing on continuing education post-school and resources for professional networking and involvement during and after your formal education.
Clara Lieu is the founder of Art Prof, a free website for learning visual arts. From 2007-2020, she was an Adjunct Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design where she taught in the departments of Foundation Studies, Printmaking, Painting, and Illustration. She has written for the New York Times and given lectures at Brown University, the National Art Education Association conference, and in Vancouver and China. Her work has been profiled on WBUR, Artsy, Hyperallergic, Inside Higher Ed, WCVB’s Chronicle, and KPCC. Her work has also been exhibited at the International Print Center New York, the Danforth Museum of Art, the Currier Museum of Art, and the Davis Museum and Cultural Center.
Sarah Stein-Sapir is a private art consultant that specializes in contemporary and emerging art. She studied art history at Columbia University and received a Masters in Contemporary Art from the Sotheby’s Institute in New York. Upon graduating she began working at Gagosian Gallery’s flagship space on West 24th Street and then went on to work with the World Wide Head of Contemporary Art at auction house Phillips de Pury. After her time there, she joined Philippe Segalot at esteemed art advisory firm Giraud Pissarro Segalot. Along with partners Lionel Pissarro and Franck Giraud and with offices in New York and Paris, GPS dealt primarily with late 19th , 20th and 21st century art. In 2012, Sarah was hired by former auction house expert Guy Bennett and serves as Director of Pelham Holdings. At that time, she also began advising independently for both private clients and developers through her company Stein-Sapir Art. Her major development projects include Extell Development’s ONE57 and their forthcoming Central Park Tower in Manhattan on what is commonly referred to as billionaire’s row. Sarah is also the founder and chair of the Madison Square Park Art Council.
Katherine “Kat” Cheairs is a curator, educator and filmmaker. Ms. Cheairs leads the conceptualization, development, and implementation of art education programs at Howl as the director of education. Kat’s areas of interest include: HIV/AIDS; visual culture; media arts therapy; community arts; and, critical race theory in art education. Katherine has a ten-year track record of working with a wide range of art education programs in media and interdisciplinary arts for both K-12 and adult populations. Her programs have served over one thousand individuals and include work with youth and adults experiencing incarceration, social and emotional learning difficulties, and trauma. Ms. Cheairs has designed and taught media arts programs for organizations such as, BRIC, Tribeca Film Institute, Film Society of Lincoln Center and Four Freedoms Park Conservancy. Kat has appeared and presented on panels at the Tribeca Film Institute, BAM, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Aperture Foundation and UnionDocs. Ms. Cheairs has a Master of Fine Arts in Film and Television Production from the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts at Chapman University.
College Night aims to provide real resources to students who are interested in pursuing careers in art, design, and museums, with an emphasis on breaking down the pathways and barriers that can intimidate young professionals when planning for their futures. Our student programming provides professional development opportunities such as a lecture series of museum professionals across departments and throughout the world of design, as well as creative workshops, resumé reviews, and direct mentorship with our museum staffers.
College Night moved online in March of 2020, and is free of charge. To learn about the perks of becoming a Student Member at Poster House, please visit our Join page.

Walking Tour of West Village Neon
2020-10-20 18:30 - 20:00
Due to the success of our Walking Tour of Historic Chinatown Signage, Poster House is partnering again with design historian Thomas Rinaldi as he guides you on this 90-minute walking tour of the West Village.
Greenwich Village is blessed with an especially dense concentration of vintage neon signs. Signs like these advertised businesses large and small throughout the city beginning in the 1920s and 1930s. They fell out of favor in the 1960s due to rising costs, restrictive zoning ordinances, and the appearance of less costly forms of outdoor advertising. In recent years, they have all but disappeared as old, independent businesses across the city have succumbed to rent hikes and old age. This tour will take us past about a dozen signs dating to the 1930s, 40s and 50s, marking the locations of some of the neighborhood’s most stalwart restaurants, bars, and small businesses. We will see them at dusk, as they start to come to light and when they look their best. Some have been beautifully restored; all are in perpetual danger of disappearing. We will discuss their materials, design, origins and future.
Thomas Rinaldi is the co-author of the book Hudson Valley Ruins: Forgotten Landmarks of an American Landscape, published by the University Press of New England in 2006, and the author of New York Neon, published by W.W. Norton in 2012. His photographs have been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, The New York Observer, Westchester Magazine, CNN Online, and elsewhere, and have been exhibited at the Municipal Art Society of New York and at the New York State Museum in Albany.
NOTE: This tour does NOT begin at Poster House. You will be emailed the starting location one week before the event. Guests should be prepared to walk on uneven, crowded streets for 90 minutes without seating.
In the event of rain, the walking tour will take place on November 17.
