Object Details
- Artist
- William John Heaslip
- Physical Description
- Relief Halftone: Multicolor illustrated print advertising Coca-Cola. One of a series, depicting a F4U-1 in flight through a blue sky with clouds over water, a steamship in the distance. Image within a gold and white border. Coca-Cola logo and illustration of two glass Coca-Cola bottles on a silver tray bridges the border and the illustration. Artist signature reproduced at bottom right. Within white border at bottom right, text describing plane specifications in a small black sans-serif font.
- Summary
- Fly Now: The National Air and Space Museum Poster Collection
- Throughout their history, posters have been a significant means of mass communication, often with striking visual effect. Wendy Wick Reaves, the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery Curator of Prints and Drawings, comments that "sometimes a pictorial poster is a decorative masterpiece-something I can't walk by without a jolt of aesthetic pleasure. Another might strike me as extremely clever advertising … But collectively, these 'pictures of persuasion,' as we might call them, offer a wealth of art, history, design, and popular culture for us to understand. The poster is a familiar part of our world, and we intuitively understand its role as propaganda, promotion, announcement, or advertisement."
- Reaves' observations are especially relevant for the impressive array of aviation posters in the National Air and Space Museum's 1300+ artifact collection. Quite possibly the largest publicly-held collection of its kind in the United States, the National Air and Space Museum's posters focus primarily on advertising for aviation-related products and activities. Among other areas, the collection includes 19th-century ballooning exhibition posters, early 20th-century airplane exhibition and meet posters, and twentieth-century airline advertisements.
- The posters in the collection represent printing technologies that include original lithography, silkscreen, photolithography, and computer-generated imagery. The collection is significant both for its aesthetic value and because it is a unique representation of the cultural, commercial and military history of aviation. The collection represents an intense interest in flight, both public and private, during a significant period of its technological and social development.
- Credit Line
- Gift of Robert M. Gaynor
- 1943
- Inventory Number
- A19772838018
- Restrictions & Rights
- Usage conditions apply
- Type
- ART-Posters, Original Art Quality
- Medium
- Poster, Advertising
- Dimensions
- 2-D - Unframed (H x W): 33 × 38.1cm (1 ft. 1 in. × 1 ft. 3 in.)
- Country of Origin
- United States of America
- See more items in
- National Air and Space Museum Collection
- National Air and Space Museum
- Record ID
- nasm_A19772838018
- GUID (Link to Original Record)
- http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/nv9f921f128-5660-4f12-b745-82e2807c172c
