s3e75 posters vs prints with Angelina Lippert

 This is Platemark with me, Ann Shafer.  Platemark is a podcast about prints and the printmaking ecosystem. We're talking about fine art prints, things like etchings and woodcuts, screen prints and lithographs, usually limited editions, although not always.  Today, I'm talking to the director of Poster House, a new museum in New York City, Angelina Lippert.

She and I talk about what the difference really is between prints and posters, because in the end, they are basically all made by the same techniques and are  on the same substrate, paper.  So, what is the difference? I'll let you in on the big secret, it's all intentionality.

 Even more exciting, for those of you in the New York metro area, Angelina will be a speaker at the Brooklyn Fine Art Print Fair coming up at the end of March. She and Nicholas Lowry, who is the poster person at Swann Galleries, will be duking it out, a battle royale about prints versus posters. It is going to be on Sunday,

March 30th at 1 p. m.  at Powerhouse Arts in Brooklyn.  And of course, after you listen to them duke it out, you can wander upstairs to the print fair proper and buy your first acquisition, or your fifth, or your hundredth.  Okay, let's see. Housekeeping. I identify as a cis het white woman and I use the pronouns she/her.

I record Platemark in Baltimore, Maryland, the land of the Piscataway Conoy people.  Images Angelina and I talk about are in the show notes over at platemarkpodcast. com. Over there you can also support the pod by hitting support and donate, or you can leave a review, or you can leave me a message and tell me who you'd like me to talk to next.

 I think that's it. Let's get rolling.   

 📍

Angelina, it's wonderful to see you. Thank you so much for coming on Platemark today. My absolute pleasure. I was aware that Poster House had started, and then suddenly  I heard you on another pod and I was like, Oh, I need her on my podcast.  Thank you. I, I, I, uh, I'm, I'm nothing if not a show pony, so.

Well, yes, we've all, yes, we've all been there.   I want to know about you. But first, I think people, because Poster House is so new, probably don't know a lot about it. Can you give us a little background about the museum and its newness and why it came to be? Sure,  so, Poster House  is the first and only museum in the country dedicated to the art and history of posters.

 I'm a poster historian, have been for about 20 years. And,  we were incorporated in 2017, opened to the public in 2019, since we had to gut a building.  We are in what was the TechServe space on 23rd Street, so anyone who needed their, uh, Mac repaired before the Apple store. That's where you would have gone.

And now it's a museum.  So we opened in 2019. Obviously, that was right before the pandemic. So we had a brief pause where we actually developed a lot of exciting online programming during that time.  We reopened and  we do four exhibitions every six months, so  for half the year, we have two main stage exhibitions and two auxiliary exhibitions, so our downstairs hallway we activated, our upstairs entry foyer we activated, because people kept asking for more posters.

We try to show as broad and inclusive an  array of poster stories as possible. So every, every country has advertising. So if we have something from Japan in one gallery, we'll have something from the American South in another, we'll have something from Ghana in another. So it's, it's, we try to be very inclusive of all times and places that posters have existed.

So yeah, that's, that's our, that's our goal is to tell the full and complete history of posters.  It's a, it's a lofty goal in my mind and I cannot believe that you guys pulled it off  in a two year period opening a building in Manhattan. It's insane. Well, our board president Valerie Crosswhite is a very determined woman and she she made it happen. Is she the mind behind the whole thing?

She's part of the mind behind the whole thing. There were a group of very passionate poster people in the city who. Actually, there had been talks in America in general about having a poster museum since like the 70s. I know that Vegas was floated as a place for a while with, with my former boss. I, I used to work for a commercial gallery and auction house.

Um, and it just never quite got off the ground. But then a bunch of very passionate poster people got together and realized that like, oh, New York is obviously the best place for this.  We obviously have a deep history of advertising in Manhattan. They got their act together and they opened a museum.

But who's funding it? Viewers like you. Uh, no, no, it is, like, it's, it's nobody famous. It's not like, it's, it's not like Barbara Streisand is behind the museum.  It's just a bunch of pretty average people that are really passionate about posters that are funding it. And also, government grants. We, it's not like we're just privately funded.

We, we apply for and receive government funding as well as private funding for the museum. You're just like any other museum. Kind of, but pretty much. We're not, we're not like a weird operation. We're, we're a very traditional museum structure.  Yeah, I was looking at pictures of the space   and I love this idea that you can walk down a sidewalk from 23rd to 24th Street.

And I think that's wonderful. And our architects actually, um, so yeah, the building is a through and through so you can enter on both ends, although the official entrance is 23rd Street, but our architects LTL, they were really intrigued by the idea that posters are the art of the street.  So when you walk in, they try to continue that kind of outdoor architecture into the space.

So you walk through and there's like concrete and wood and it feels like you're, you're still in a  semi industrial setting. And then it goes into the galleries. So it's, it's a continuation, a funnel, if you will, from, from the, the streets of 23rd Street into the streets of Poster House.  I love it. All right.

So before we talk more specifically about exhibitions and things that are going on there, I want to, I want to know about you. What was your upbringing like in terms of art, and did you know you wanted to go into art history, and when did the posters come into it? Uh, I was going to be a doctor.  Um, Specifically a virologist, so like my background is science.

 That was what I really wanted to do, and then I, I visited the Fogg Museum at Harvard as we were, like, declaring our majors and stuff. I visited the Fogg Museum and I saw Max Beckmann   triptych, and I was like, oh shit, I guess it's art history now. Oh! And there are those moments for a lot of people where they, I knew a collector once who became a dealer, and he was like in pharmacies,  like that was his business, and he saw the Toulouse Lautrec jockey,   which is a, like it's the, it's from behind you, you're looking at like a horse's butt and a jockey as they gallop off, and he was just so taken by it that he changed his career and became a Lautrec poster dealer. 

But there are these moments that I find with a lot of poster people where it was, they were in something completely different and then they saw something and they're like, oh, I guess this is it now. So yeah, for me it was, it was German Expressionist painting. Um, so I switched paths and went to focus on art history, uh, and I originally wanted to run Sotheby's.

Uh, if Sotheby's is listening, uh, hi. Um, but uh, but yeah, so I wanted to be in the auction space. That was kind of my passion, and I, and I started in the auction space. Albeit not at Sotheby's or Christie's. I, I started at a poster specific auction house, which was, I've said this many times.

It's nepotism was, was everyone's best friend 20, 30 years ago. Like if you did, I knew somebody whose dad collected posters and I was like, eh, posters, why would I want to do that? Cause they weren't as important to me then as they are now. And then I learned just so much at this auction house within like the first week that I was like, Oh.

These things are incredible. And then I moved to England and I was right near, uh, Christie's South Ken and I saw they had poster sales. So I got more into it. And then I came back and was offered the job at the same auction house and just stayed there for a decade. And they've just been recently absorbed by Rago, which is another auction house.

So it's, posters shall continue. But yeah, so that, that's how, that's how I got into posters and kind of got like, uh, sucked into that vortex.  I think, you know, that's how I got into prints. I got sucked in backwards, like I was not intending. Yeah. Yeah.  That's how it goes in art history, especially because when you're being, you know, the student in school, like, nobody's talking about posters in your classes.

No, and nobody's really talking about graphic design in general, for the most part. Like, art history is pure canon. It's painting and sculpture and

maybe a little bit of, like, a sprinkling of performance art and, like, other art forms, uh, toward the end of your modern art class. But generally, I never even saw a vintage poster in an academic setting, like at, at, at any point in my, in my academic career. And when I've talked to certain people at universities where they're like, Oh, the reason we don't have a graphic design history class is because the school requires professors to have a PhD in that topic. And there is no PhD in graphic design history.

So you have like the, this, this catch 22 of there can't be because there isn't. Which is, which is really sad because there really are very few places teaching graphic design history as opposed to graphic design practice. Um, and I, I can't use Photoshop at all, but I, but I can talk forever about like Cassandre and Toulouse Lautrec.

But yeah, I would love to see more places teach graphic design history, specifically poster history, because that's my thing, but just graphic design history in general is so lacking in the wider, um, educational system. Yeah, I, um, part of our podcast series is on the history of prints, Western prints, and the person who is our SME for it, Tru Ludwig taught for, it was only a couple of times, but taught a history of illustration class at MICA, which is different than graphic design, I'm sure Ellen Lupton probably, she probably threw one in there too at some point at MICA, but,  but it was, it was hard.

And after a semester or two, cause he always brought his classes to the BMA, the Baltimore Museum, and I would pull all this stuff out, we decided that the history of prints kind of encompassed all of that stuff because illustration runs in and out and so do posters and you know, it's all sort of, it's all in the same column really.

Well, yeah, I talk about how early posters like, like, Cappiello behind me, um, uh, SEM. Those designers started as illustrators.  They did the cartoons for political satire magazines or humor magazines, newspapers. And then the earliest Cappiello's in particular are just enlarged cartoons, and then they evolve into what we consider more like poster graphic design.  So they all have their roots in illustration.

It's amazing to me also to think about because you are just like we are in a print department that's, you know, more fine art esque, quote unquote, uh,  prints. You have to cover every time period, every country. But you guys are even further. Like, we were focused on Western, and we had someone who would come in and dabble in the Japanese prints for a while.

But we weren't in charge of, you know, Chinese paintings, and that kind of stuff. But you're dealing with every possible permutation, which is a lot. Yeah, and I obviously, I see the, the, the reason that a print department of Western art would bring in Japanese, just because there is so much that is drawn, um, from Japanese prints in Western prints.

And my background is European America and Latin America, like that, that is where I, where I am most comfortable.  So one of my earliest curatorial things with Poster House was doing Ghanaian posters, which was a really exciting and educational moment for me. Um, and I was worried that I wasn't going to do it justice, but we, we, at that moment, we started a initiative at the museum where every exhibition is reviewed by two outside experts in the field, so if I, for something like that, where I am not the world's expert on Ghanaian anything, to have two people who are, be like, check for breadth of narrative, like am I missing something important, um, as well as accuracy, uh, which, which is, we have, we have maintained that now for every show. So we're doing a show on early transit posters, and someone from the New York Transit Museum is reviewing it for the transit history component, and then one of the Bowery Boys is reviewing it for the New York history component.

And so always finding those, finding those people who aren't necessarily poster people, but who know the history of what posters are talking about. Um, is I, I think a really fundamental way of looking at them, because  there aren't very many poster people in the world, but there are historians for all these niche things that posters cover.

And so talking with the, with those scholars  is really key to the research in, in any of these exhibitions. Yeah, I think that, that is a model that could be put forward more widely. Uh, yeah, when I've talked to other curators and they're like, Oh, that's such a good idea, I wish we did that. I was like, why is nobody else doing that?

Um, because even if it's a topic that I know inside and out, like I wrote the book on Art Deco posters, I still had two people review my Art Deco show, just because I'm not the expert on Art Deco architecture, so an architecture historian read that just to make sure I was okay. I think it has to do with hubris, right?

Probably. Uh, but I, but  I don't know. I'd rather assume I, I, I know what I do. I know enough to know what I don't know. Yeah. Which is a model I like to live by when I'm, when I'm writing. I, I find, and maybe I'm overstepping  here, but I find that the print peoples, like you and me, are a little bit more, well maybe because we have to cover so much, a little bit more, like, oh my god, I don't know anything about this, I need help.

I also think it's what the, the, the medium covers. Because, like, a painting is usually a, or even a sculpture, is usually just the brain, the like, expression of the singular person and their vision. Which is great, but it also means that you can kind of bullshit a lot about what, like, this artist actually meant.

This about the color red.  That's all well and good, but like I, I have a joke with a friend of mine where we will walk into a museum and just like pontificate about some, some ridiculous wall label about how this actually reflects the artist's passion for zodiac signs, um, and their love of chickens.

But, with prints, and particularly posters, the prints even were made for a commercial purpose. Like they are much more saleable than the painting because they are a multiple. You can't be that precious about them because there's a commercial element that's intrinsic to their creation. So yeah, I think that the lack of hubris in the field in general is because we're dealing with something that is meant to be,  is, it follows a brief to some extent, um, but at the very minimum was meant to be circulated.

Right.  Yeah. It's hard too, because, you know, there we are trying to get some sunshine on our subject matter and get the world to agree that it is fine art, and it has this, you know, toe still in the commercial realm. So hard. Yeah, totally. Um, I know like this evening, I'm giving a talk at Rizzoli on film posters, which film posters have always, even within the poster world, film posters are a different beast.

They are, they are quote memorabilia. Which is such a derogatory term for what is the most expensive tier of poster art. Like, on the market, movie posters sell for higher prices than the highest priced Toulouse Lautrec. Toulouse Lautrec caps out at half a million dollars. Metropolis, 1. 1 million. So, you're looking at like a massive disparity.

Um, but that is, but they're considered memorabilia. And I'm like, but it's, it's, it's artistry. It's not just like a Mickey Mouse figurine. Like, it is, it is something beyond that. So yeah, there's, there's a lot of, um, less than pleasant thinking about the, the genre itself, but it, but my job is to basically show people that this is a legitimate and amazing art form.

Also, it's way more scientific than a painting. Like, yes, obviously, somebody came up with, like, how to different pigments, uh, like last longer or blend better,  or how the different formulations of different paints are. But making a print is so, you have to, the registration, just the, the, the, like if it's a woodblock, the carving, figuring out how lithography works, like there is a, an element of, of, of science, of alchemy that comes into place when you're making a print.

 People assume like, oh, it's just printed, it's a multiple, they think it's easier. Um, it is not easier than making a painting or a sculpture, it's just a completely different art form that actually involves a bit more science. And usually more people. I think that's the, the, the cult of the genius artist is killing all of us.

Yeah, I, I, we, I was, uh, with our staff a few days ago at Ricco Moresca, which is a outside art gallery in Chelsea. And they were just about to close an exhibition that they had of maquettes. So like the preliminary paintings for posters.  It was a collection of circus maquettes so all of the, the big like Buffalo Bills Wild West or Ringling Brothers, um, and with most of them came out of like Morgan Litho or Strowbridge, which were the two big circus printers and the the A, they're not to size, they're smaller, so somebody's translating a painting onto a stone, so that's another person, other than the artist.

But even the actual maquette itself, they would have a lettering guy, and a heads guy, and a horses guy, cause, and yes, they probably are all men. Yeah, they would have different people based on their own specialties, it can be a collaborative process, particularly for an industrial printer like Sturbridge or Morgan, like the Cappiello poster behind me, that's one guy.

Um, but let me tell you, Cappiello's maquettes are really unattractive. So, in my mind, the real arti yes, Cappiello has a good vision for composition. But the real genius is the person translating his sketch. Ooh, got a little thumbs up on the, translating his sketch onto a lithographic stone to make this.

The ability to translate an artist's vision to a printing medium is frankly more important than the original presented idea. Because if this guy sucked, then who, who would care about the poster? It's, it's that person that we don't know, those, those anonymous people that are lost to history that really make these things exquisite.

Is, is there no moment in time in poster design slash production where people are known, the, the people behind the scenes? Uh, not, not really, and not to my knowledge. Um, I mean, I'm sure there's somebody who has like a  logbook some, in some archive somewhere, but I have never heard of it. Um, please somebody's PhD.

Oh yeah, really? And there are also some artists like Toulouse Lautrec, like Alphonse Mucha, who, who worked directly on the stone. Like they were, they were part of that process. Jules Cheret, he owned the printing house, so like yeah, he was involved in that process. But,  in many cases the person translating the image to the stone who is the actual hand of the artist is completely unknown.

And could have been many people at a given, a given production plant. For people who aren't really poster savvy, the, the, um, I think the beginnings of poster in 1860 ish, somewhere in there. Yeah, so it's not when lithography was invented, it's when it was perfected by a guy named Jules Cheret in France.

He figured out a way to make it cheap and quick. That was the, you had to mechanize it in a way that made it feasible and affordable to use as advertising. So Jules Cheret, father of the, of, of, the poster around  1860s, 1870s, when he figured it out, 1880s is when it like really explodes, but that's, that's a time period known as the color explosion.

Like it's, it's a moment when suddenly everything went from brown and black and white to colors. Sometimes three stories high, just invading the streets. And there were complaints,  like people writing letters to the Editor, they're like, my eyes are being raped by all this color and these bawdy women selling cigarettes and cabarets. Basically imagine how you know how you feel when you walk through

um, like Times Square and it's all the digital billboards and you're like, Oh, this is awful. That's how they felt about posters. A lot of people were like, Oh, this is so awful. I just want to be left alone. Every, every era has  that overwhelming new media. And this was new media. But one thing I really like to point out a lot is that for the majority of people, like the average person, not the super wealthy people, but the majority of people, this was the first time you were seeing printed color.

It is the Wizard of Oz moment, like that moment where she lands in Oz.  You would not have seen printed color before, and imagine how insane that is, colors that don't exist in your world are now on the wall, which is just mind, mind blowing. Because like fabric colors would, would not have been, they would have been pretty drab, the, the, fixed pigment wasn't as vibrant as it is today. Uh, so I cannot understate how amazing a moment that was culturally for like everybody, like it was the most en masse movement for visual media that I think has really ever happened.

Beyond like the invention of the television. Right, right. Well, and the parallel of the, the advent of imagery being printed at all back in the, you know, 15th century. Yeah, same kind of, holy crap, what is that? Yeah, exactly. So what I  want to ask you about is  this, I have this image of the, the poster and the print, like fighting it out in the museum collection drawers, you know.

Wow.  Like, there's no clear line.  Or is there a clear line between the fine art print and the poster and,  and how do you describe that to people who don't know what, what's going on? Oh yes, I believe there is a firm line. I'm, I'm big on the line. Um, so a fine art print is decorative.  It is meant to be saved.

A poster is garbage that is trying to communicate something, to get you to act. If it's Live, Laugh, Love, it's not a poster. If it's Vote for Me, Buy This, Attend This, it is a poster. So the mission is getting someone to do something.  A beautiful print of a lovely young woman in a dress is not asking anyone to do something.

It's decorative. And that's lovely.  There's a commercial brief.  An artist is solving a problem with a poster, because  they are translating a, a, a client's vision, um, into a succinct image that sells, that sells something and that's, that could be a, a, a candidate or, or a candy bar.

The print is, is a bit more precious. It can be signed and numbered. It can be, it, also if you, if you go into a print department, um, there, sometimes there are gloves. It's very like, oh, the preciousness, we must look under that, the lighting must be low, only so many candles of light. It's very, there's a, there's a ceremoniousness around, around print culture, uh, which I, I don't disagree with.

I've said this on another podcast, so forgive me if anyone's listened to both, uh, all three of those people. Um, but uh, if you go to a poster auction and you go to the preview, all the poster dealers, bare hands, off the subway, or just  over the surface of the poster because we are feeling for restoration.

We are feeling for where the airbrushing has been. We're feeling for if the type of paper used, because you can tell, like I can run my hands over a poster and tell you what country it was printed in. Because of the way the ink lays and where the paper is. Like, there's, there's like a French printing process, and there's an Italian printing process, and they feel very different.

And don't ask me to describe it, because it's, it's something my fingers know. It was really interesting a few weeks ago, I was, I was with, um, a few people at the museum, we had unframed a bunch of stuff to, to assess it. And I was like, okay, doing my, my finger scan. I was like, okay, this is, this border has been redone.

And they're like, we don't see it. And I'm like under a light box. It doesn't show up on the light box, but I'm like, but if you feel it. And it took them a long time to be able to like, think they felt it. Which is interesting because like, it's something that I was just, again, working for an auction house.

You see 600 items a quarter. You, you, you become so attuned to knowing where the restoration, what restoration feels like, what different inks feel like. And it's, it again, can't be explained, but it's only taught through repetition, which I'm assuming is going to be a dying art because it's not like print, print departments absolutely would never want you to run your hands along everything.

Just get fingerprints all over it. And then we'll put the Rembrandt away. But,  uh, so, so yeah, I, I, I  feel like I've, I've lost the question. No, no, it's fine. Well, and along the same lines, the, the paper itself,  I'm sure, can help you understand if it's been reprinted or, you know, it's a Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Although we don't really have watermarks the way a print department does. Like, like that, that I know is a whole I remember this from my Renaissance print class at Smith. Wait, you had a renaissance print class? I did, but actually because I was at Smith, we had the Five College Consortium, so I took it at Mount Holyoke.

They had a print specific subject within print specific class? Oh yes, they had the Baroque prints class, they had a renaissance prints class, they had the Mount, never underestimate a Seven Sisters art history program. Holy crap. Wow. That's the posters.  Well, of course  I, that's amazing. I have to talk to somebody up there.

I did not know that. Okay. I mean, this is 20, this is more than 20 years ago. I I'm assuming that professor is not no longer amongst us. Oh my gosh. Do you remember who it was? No idea. Oh gosh, okay. I remember, I, I only remember like certain professors and they were the ones that were like the weirdos. Um,  I don't remember the good ones or the bad ones.

I remember the ones that like gave me pause.  But did you have the one professor who convinced you that art history was the thing or you were already in? So   if I was going to go with one professor that convinced me art history was the thing, it would actually go back, I was at boarding school for high school, which is not.

My parents didn't want me to go. I, I like,  walked into their bedroom at like 6am with a, with a, like a science fair presentation and said like, I would like to go to Switzerland and they were like, absolutely not. What are you talking about? Um, and I said, well, my second choice is Austria. And they're like, no, you're going to the local high school.

And then I was like, okay, well, what about this boarding school in Connecticut? They're like, okay, fine.  So I went to Miss Porter's in Connecticut of my own volition and there was an art history professor there, Brad Carpenter, who was  a challenging man to say,. We, we did not like each other. We were like, we openly disliked each other.  He was obnoxious, but he was so good at what he did that, um, and so passionate about art history in general.

 I  fell in love with it through his passion for, for teaching it.  Did he think that he, he was running dead poet society? Absolutely.  Like he, he had a Robin Williams view of himself and I was like, you're not, oh, captain, my captain. Um, but, but, um, But the passion he brought to the class really changed my appreciation for art history, or art as history, um, as a, as a means of, of, of following the trajectory of the human experience. That was a new way of looking at history that he brought to the table, so absolutely give him credit for that moment.

Okay.  I went to Loomis Chaffee. Oh, yeah, I love Loomis. Also of my own volition, but for different reasons than you, which we'll talk about later. All right, but I wanted to also ask you about the collections policy that's on the website for Poster House, which is fascinating to me because first of all,  obviously when people contact the museum, they have to declare what it is they want to give.

You can't just like say, Oh, I have some things.  But the fact that you have on there, if you send us something that we have not asked you to send, we're going to rip it up. Well, we don't, we don't say rip it up to be fair, but we, we will, we just like pay to have it sent back to you or like, it's going to be gone because we didn't ask for it.

We never approved it. We just, we don't like. We we're in New York. We don't have the space. And also taking on an object is not a free thing for a museum. For anything that is given to us, we have to find the space. Space costs money. Uh, we have to preserve it, restore it possibly, uh, make sure it's, it, so all of that costs money.

I think we did an analysis a few years ago of what it costs for each item to be added to our collection over a five year period, and that item will cost us over a thousand dollars over five years to, on average.  That's the ones that cost us no money to restore, that can just like go in a drawer between glassine,  versus ones that need to be linen backed and, and, and preserved.

 The thing that realistically happens is we do get sent a lot of things every year  unsolicited, uh, and they're usually reproductions. Or they're somebody's personal art project. Or they're  things that are in such horrific condition that there's no way that we could safely incorporate into the collection without putting everything else at risk.

So stuff covered in mold. Um, so it's, it's those things like we, we can't house this here, we have to get rid of it. So that's what the, that's, that's the directness of the donations policy is like, really, just don't send it unless you've talked to us beforehand. Uh, so that, that's why that's there. That's brilliant.

But no, it sucks when we get something and I was like, well, this is a fake. And then we email them, like, we're so, thank you for, for thinking of us.  But this poster that you have is, is a reproduction.  We cannot accept it. And they're like, well, then send it back to us. It's like, well, shipping back to you in Switzerland is going to cost us $200, so either you pay for it to be returned or it just goes into the staff if you want to decorate your apartment pile.

And usually they don't want to pay for return shipping, so.   Many people have like reproductions of little mini Cappiello posters in their dorm, in their rooms for all I know. Right.  But isn't, oh gosh, now I'm searching back in my memory banks. Wasn't there a convention in, uh, at least 19th century, late 19th century France, where Paris, where they would produce a smaller domestic sized version of the larger image for publication?

So you're thinking probably of the Maître de l'affiche series, which is a, they sell them now, like auction houses and galleries will sell them now as individual plates,  but it was a book, uh, Maître de l'affiche, Master of the Poster, and it was a collection chosen by Jules Cheret for the most part. He was involved in the printing of like the best posters of the year for your personal pleasure in book format. 

And obviously this is a time when the book trade is very hot. So having a book with all the, and if you have a complete Maître series, like the uncut book, because most of the copies have been cut out since then, a complete Maître set is quite expensive. So, and yeah, so it's miniaturized versions of posters.

Would I, would I buy the book? Sure. Would I buy the individual plate? No. One, because I don't believe in cutting up books. Um, because the sanctity of the book I think is a thing. And also it's a specific type of art object. But also because  that was just not their intended purpose, and the artist of any of those posters, like if, um, I know Ethel Reed is in one of them.

Ethel Reed wasn't involved in the printing of the reproduction. It is somebody interpreting her poster and miniaturizing it. So  it is a of the period reproduction. So I would not assign a value to it based on the artist. I would assign a value to it based on it as artifact. Well, I wouldn't display it because it's not an original poster. It's a print.  Um, or actually it's a book plate. uh, and trust me, the amount of arguments I've gotten into. That was brilliant. It's not a poster, it's a print . It's a print Just saying. It's not a print, it's a poster. Yes. Uh, and thus the the battle of the department. That's right.  Uh, but, but yeah, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's a miniaturized poster in print form.

It's a book plate. Uh, it would be no different than if I got a  very fine catalogue of, I don't know, Shepard Fairey, he's a living artist. If Shepard Fairey came out with a portfolio of his greatest posters, it's a collection of prints based on posters. It's not the actual poster. It's something more precious than the original with a different audience.  That's the other thing. The audience is different between the two. If the audience for a poster presumes  thousands of people of all different backgrounds, literacy levels, educational levels, socio economic levels. Thousands of people looking at it and looking at it for less than a second

and taking in that information. A book or a print or a magazine ad presumes a one to one relationship where somebody is looking at something intentionally, spending time looking at that something, and able to read like the fine print or to notice detail.  There's an intimacy in the print that is lacking in the poster.

The poster speaks to all, the print speaks to one. When it's, in the home, uh, when it's in its intended space. So  the different audience and the different reception to the image is, is important in the definition as well. Because when I think about Lautrec and, and friends, Cheret, all those guys, and I think about  that

they were doing the, the programs for the theatre libre or the menus for the parties or the, and it's all, you know, the text and image very much in the same aesthetic zone as the poster. Mm-hmm . And then they're creating the pastels and the paintings. It's like they  got a finger in every pie. And then what do you do when you're the, the prints and drawings  curator at the museum?

Like, it's, it's so hard.  It's hard, but I think it's also a great reminder that like, artists are not one trick ponies in most cases. Like, Lady Gaga also acts. Um, not very well, but she does.  But  most people aren't mono faceted, most people are multi faceted, and particularly working artists have to make money.

So yes, Lautrec would make a painting, but making a poster pays the bills. Making a painting, you gotta wait for someone to buy the painting.  One of my favorite examples is Pierre Bonnard who does have, that's the poster that you and I have talked about outside of the podcast, where you see,   📍 he does a poster of like a ratty old lady, um, who's meant to represent print culture.

And then like a young sprightly boy rushing through with a portfolio of, of posters. And it's like the print versus the poster world, because that, that was something that was happening at the time .  That there was a shift in the appreciation of the printed medium. But Bonnard. Yes, he had paintings and he had post impressionist paintings.

The Met has a whole room of his work. Do I like him? No. Don't like Bonnard as a painter. Not my thing. Meh. But his posters are really interesting because none of them look like they're by the same guy. Mm.  Uh, and that I find to be very telling about how he approached the poster as a  artistic medium, because he had his style that was saleable for paintings.

That was what he did. But then he was using posters as a means of experimentation. So for a poster for champagne, he's got a woman that like is made of, like, she's Gumby. She's made of spaghetti. So she's not following the, the realities of bone structure.  But she's meant to like show drunkenness .  Or he has that poster of  the old woman and the young boy that looks chaotic. It's, it, it's all sketchy.  It looks almost like a primordial,  who's the guy who did all the stuff for, um, Hunter S. Thompson, those, those, those really sketchy Ralph Steadman. Oh, yes. I think that's his name. But yeah, but that really like chaotic sketchy drawing, that's it kind of looks like like what that would have been at that time.

And then he has another one that's like kind of surreal. He has one that's like kind of cubist. He's, he's using the medium, and then one looks like a Gibson girl. So he has so many different styles that he's expressing through posters because it's cheaper, it's quicker. You're just fulfilling a client's brief.

Poster artists that are successful today, like Dawn Baillie, who I just did a show on, they're successful because they don't repeat the same thing. Because  in commercial design, you don't necessarily want to have an obvious style. You don't want to have, like, oh, this is by Angelina. You want it to fit whatever you're advertising. 

So for Bonnard to have such a fluidity of different  illustrational styles and posters meant that he was probably the most flexible guy you could go to for your ads. Again, I think I've lost the plot regarding the question. But I'm fascinated because, you know, Lautrec   obviously has a look, even if he's, you know, going this way or that way for various clients, but in, or Cassandre or somebody, you can always pick up  Cassandre off the wall.

But it's fascinating to think that, that you wouldn't want to be known for, like Paula Scher, don't we know her, her look, right? Yeah, no, and, and there are clients that go to Paula for, for the Paula effect, which is amazing. Like Paula, like, like it is a successful thing. But then there's somebody like, uh, Dafi Kühne,   who is out of Switzerland.

He's amazing. And he prides himself on, yes, there's, you can kind of tell it's a Dafi Kühne poster. Yeah. Because it's so good, but the, the style is not this. There's no through line.  Like you would not guess it's, it's not an expression of him. It's an expression of the, the thing he's promoting and that, that flexibility, I think, can serve a lot of commercial designers.

People go to them for excellence, not necessarily for a certain look. That's not to say Paula Scher is not amazing. She's amazing, obviously.  But it's just two different types of clients.  You go to Paula Scher for something that looks like a Paula Scher?

You probably don't go to Paula Scher if you want a Banksy. Like, that's a, that's a different look. Uh, you wouldn't go to Paula Scher for, um, I don't know, an abstract expressionist painting. Perhaps you would. Perhaps she has an amazing  secret body of work, uh, which I would love to see, Paula. Hello, Paula.

Paula, I love you. Um, I really do. She's on your board, right? She's on our advisory board, yeah. Um, and, uh, actually I was just in Munich this summer, and I walked into a museum, and they had a Paula Scher retrospective, and I was like, oh!  Hi Paula, I'm in your show.  I am fascinated by the idea of a couple of things.

One, that for the person who is able to morph into a style that suits the brief, which is great,  attracts a certain kind of person and brain, which is, in my mind, similar to people who are attracted to prints and printmaking because of, you know,  how many different places your brain has to go and handle different issues and things and whatever.

But then I'm also fascinated by this idea of graphic designers that work in this poster medium, and then these artists who drift over into this poster medium, and that they come at it from very different kinds of schooling and, and thought processes. It's kind of fascinating that everyone meets in the poster.

Well, yeah, because I think it's a, it's a medium that's attractive to,  to, to a broad swath of designer and artist because of its flexibility.  Also, I mean, if we're going back to the,  to the not present day period, it's, it's a means of making money. Like there, there was a, a very, very, It was a well funded career  if you could make commercial work as an artist.

Far more lucrative than if you were just making one painting every six months. So it was attractive to people then for that. For now, I see a lot of, um, artists who.  Like, one of my favorite contemporary poster designers is a guy named Winston Tseng.    He's a big name designer. He works for  Adidas and Supreme, and he does all the, like, these really polished graphic design stuff.

He has a very specific guerrilla poster style that comes out in, Uh, very witty, very wry, very cutting, unofficial campaigns that he will, under stealth of night, put up in a given area. And, the most recent one he did, again, it was all over the news, was Kamala Harris is the official, um, candidate of the Philadelphia Eagles.

Um, so it's like her in a football helmet, holding a football. But it's very much his style.  All of his posters have a very recognizable style. Uh, but I love that every time he puts a poster up, there's always like eight news outlets that are like,  how could the Eagles do this? Um, and,  it's just weird that no one ever thinks it's satire.

Um, because, no, of course a football team is not going to endorse a candidate. Like, that's not going to happen.  So he keeps posting all this news footage of people questioning the legitimacy, or presuming the legitimacy of this poster,  when clearly it's a work of satire. But, uh, but yeah, but he's a, again, my point being, like, he is a very functional, very successful designer who does this for his own joy.

Nice.  I also wanted to ask you about, you said that you didn't  accept donations of personal projects kinds of things, which I, um, I'm all in, but didn't you guys did a show of, um, the Women's March protests? Did I dream that? And  were they hand, did you collect the handmade signs people were holding up or?

So that, that, that's an interesting show for us. Cause I don't think we would do something like that now that we are bigger and no more because preserving those has been a real pain. Because there's a lot of like, like they were left on the street and collected by somebody who donated a truck's worth of signs to us.

A, it's signage, not a poster. So  I would  not take that now. It would, but at the time it was like a very, uh, topical show to do.  I just, I don't think we would do something like that again, because like it's got footprints on some of these things, like, I don't know if there's dog pee on some of these things, like. So they're all in hermetically sealed boxes in cold storage somewhere, like, those things will, they'll come out if someone needs them, but they cannot mingle with the rest of the collection, uh, because they're, they're at risk pieces.

They've got, like, duct tape and anything sticky. Uh, a sticker, duct tape, anything like that. The,  adhesive medium breaks down fairly quickly and off gases and it just, it, it, it is a preservation nightmare. Well that, yes, and I did want to ask you about conservation because at the BMA, our low Lautrec posters, I would say probably more than half of them were linen backed.

Can't be a cheap plan to linen back all of your large, very fragile paper.  Do you guys have your own conservation department, or do you ship everything out? Like a linen backing operation is, is, it would take up a massive amount of space and the ventilation you need to not like die, uh, is, is, is important.

Uh, so no, we, we very openly use a restorer that I've been using since before I worked at the museum. He did everything for the auction house he used to work at. He does my own personal collection. He does pretty much every poster dealer uses this guy and that's Poster Conservation in Stamford, Connecticut.

They are the gold standard of poster preservation in the United States. Love them. No, it's not cheap.  Which is also why we don't, we are not aiming to collect everything. We don't need a blue chip collection. Uh, I don't think that would be a wise use of the museum's funds. Uh, again, because half a million dollars for a Lautrec can also, I mean, that, that, that's more than my buying budget a year.

So, it would just be silly to spend it on one item. We, we buy things that we plan on showing. We want to share the things we buy. We don't collect just to have them in a basement somewhere under lock and key. So, so yeah, we collect to show. So if I'm doing a show on men's fashion history, I'm going to be buying a lot of men's fashion posters.

Right now, one thing that we are really interested in doing, we've enlisted a really great curator, Brian Johnson of Polymode, and he is doing a show on the history of Native American posters. This will include, uh, stereotypical and racist imagery of Native Americans that were used by advertisers to sell products.

But the majority of the show is posters made by people within the Native American community to, to announce events, be that powwows, to, to protest events. So chronicling the very undocumented history of, of Indigenous design.  There is literally no book on Indigenous design in the world. So this is going to be a landmark show in about two or three years time that I am very excited about.

So we are actively looking for posters by  indigenous people of the Americas to include in that show. So if anyone out there knows of any, please email me. Yeah, I'd be curious to know who in our audience has a line on that. That would be interesting. Well, so that brings up another topic, which is, it sounds like you guys are shining light on areas that have previously not had a lot of like, shone upon them.

Are you? Are you able to offer guest curators and obviously yourself catalogs for every show? No, not at all. We do not have a publishing department, um, at all. Uh, we've, we've done one book with Abrams on the History of Advertising New York show that just happened, uh, curated by Nicholas Lowry of Swann, which is a, a great auction house.

Uh, he's also a mentor of mine, so it was, it was great to be able to work with him in an academic setting. But, uh, we, we just don't have the, the funds or the capacity to produce catalogs. And this catalog came to us because Abrams approached us asking to do a catalog. So, it  didn't go through traditional channels to, of, of creation.

I would absolutely be open to doing, uh, future poster related catalogs. But in many cases,  there already exists a book on the topic that we're covering. So for the Art Deco show, I had written that book on the same collection back in like 2013. So we just bought the remainder of that book and sold that in the shop.

We have a show on Nike coming  out in a few weeks on the history of Nike posters, curated by Adam Howard. And, uh, that show, there's, there's so many books on Nike that are better than anything we could do. We will be showcasing in our shop books on, on Nike that already exist. 

 Rarely has there been a topic that we've done that hasn't had like some book that already covers the majority of the material. The exception might be like the environmental show we just did that was our most successful show of all time. Yes, it would have been great to to do a catalog for that, but the lead time is also just  incredible.

We would have to have our guest curators, or if I'm doing it, me, write the show like three years in advance, which would be, um, nobody has the capacity for that.  Well, yeah, and it's, um. at me, I'm going to complain on my own behalf. But you know, it's, it's, uh, various institutions do and can produce more catalogs than other institutions.

And it, it really, um, hamstrings  curators who find themselves in institutions that can't. Like, I never got my, the book I was writing published when I was,  it's a long story, but you know, it's like, you know, if getting a catalog with your name on the, on the shelf is your goal and you end up in a small museum that can't do it, it's like, uh, yeah.

No, I mean, I would love to have my,  my name on the byline for more stuff, but that's, uh, that is not in the horizon for me anytime soon. Although, if anyone would like me to, if anyone would like a book, I am available.  As are you, apparently. Yes, apparently.  I mean, it's, it's, um.  I don't know. I feel like you have, you are more nimble than I on, on subject matter.

I'm sort of firmly in modernism, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's hard when you're not institutionally backed and, you know. But, speaking of being institutionally backed, you have been the chief curator at this  incredible new and beloved place in New York City, and suddenly are now stepping into the director's shoes.

Yes, so our executive director, Julia Knight, after five years, she has chosen to step down and pursue other things, which is a pretty natural progression since we've just had a five year anniversary. Um, and I was asked to, to, if I was interested  in filling that role . So that will be, uh, I start in, what day is today, I start in like 16 days. I will be, I will be the new executive director and curator, but that, what that means is that I, I will, I have one more show that is about to go into the editing stage.

That will be the spring show. After that, I'll step back from curation for a little bit just to, but oversee the curatorial calendar. Hire the guest curators.  I would still be the, the quality control for shows, but I would not be initiating the research on them. And until I get into a rhythm as far as being a director goes, and then I will occasionally dip back into the curatorial pool.

Uh, but yeah, I'm very excited.  Obviously everybody in this position would be a little bit nervous because it's a new thing. Um, but again, because I come from the commercial world originally, it's not like I've only ever been in academia, and that's like the sum total of my, my skill set.

I, I, I do know how to, to run and manage something. So I, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm confident I won't screw up. I'm confident in you  too.  But also being given the opportunity to shepherd a museum that's now five years in that, that like shepherds starting a new museum is a massive challenge.

So Julia did an amazing job with, with getting us off the grounds,  so  her passing me the baton to like take it forward as a, a established institution is, um, it's just a, it's a completely different job from what she had done previously. Because I won't have the challenges that she had, I will have completely different challenges.

And opportunities. Sure, sure.  Are you open to curatorial pitches for exhibitions from various and sundry? Yes, asterisks. Uh, so we plan five to seven years out. I am in contract that far out. So you, you're looking into the 2030s at this point, if you wish to curate.  Keep in mind that it is over 750 hours of work that is part of any exhibition.

 I generally have found the most success with curators who  are, who don't have a full time job elsewhere. Who are independent in some way, because realistically you would not be able to dedicate the necessary amount of time to the show. You have to have access to the collection that you wish to curate, like original first printings of the objects. So if you want to do, like somebody once pitched us a perfectly reasonable show on Shell Oil posters, which is interesting, I don't know if I would have gone with the, the, the exhibition, but they didn't, like they were, they were presuming that we would find a way to buy all of them.

I was like, okay, that's a $200,000-$250,000 investment. None of these things come on the market that often, especially the ones you want, so where do you think we're getting them? Um, because of the duration of our shows, so six months, borrowing from a museum is highly unlikely, just because of the restrictions around works on paper being on view for that long.

We have all the climate control and lighting control issues,  we uphold museum standards for that. But, almost everything we've, we've shown has either been owned by us, or owned by a private individual willing to loan. Private individuals are much more willing to work with the parameters of our exhibition structure.

So yeah, if you know a private collector who has a collection of these items, and for the upstairs gallery, that's 80 posters. For the downstairs gallery, that's 35 ish posters. So it's, It's, uh, it's, somebody was like, well, there are these ten posters. I was like, I don't know where you expect those to be. There are parameters. So yes, you can pitch me, but again, just know the, know the runway and know the, the restrictions.

Sure, sure. No, that's, that's always helpful, because I'm sure people listen and are like, oh, I have an idea, and then. Yeah, everyone has an idea, but no one knows. I'll be like, oh, we want to do a show on, on opera posters from Italy. I was like, great. I, I, I find them.  Like, I would love them. I'd love to buy them myself, but where are they?

Right. That's a good question. Where are they? Last question has to do with  when you mentioned the show that you're doing about Nike,  I, I was thinking  there's an inherent sort of  putting Nike forward as a commercial entity that happens when you do an exhibition at a place like Poster House. And do you have guidelines about, I mean, that's not really a conflict of interest, but. Well, we're not advertising Nike.

It's not like we're selling Nike shoes in the shop. We're not making money off of Nike. Um, nor is Nike making money off of us, but you're also assuming that we're not being critical of a brand when we're, when we're putting it forth.  There's a show that I'm working on that I think is, is going to be very interesting.

The research behind it is fantastic. Um, if I do say so myself, uh, and it's, uh, half of it is on General Dynamics, the, the weapons manufacturer. We're not advertising General Dynamics, the weapons manufacturer.  Their posters, which are gorgeous, are in the show, and, and the dialogue is talking about corporate propaganda versus, uh, protest propaganda, and the approach to design of both, and what the the rationale behind certain things were. And also that, like, why was weapons manufacturing important at that time and what was the, under what auspices was this presented and advertised?

So it's, it's trying to make a, I don't want to say completely neutral view of history, but really presenting a, a holistic view of how something came to be. Neither, neither heralding or condemning the product necessarily, but, because we don't, I'm not talking about the product. I'm talking about the graphic design used to sell the product.

Um, so that, that, stuff like that is, is how we approach shows that involve companies that still exist. Like we're not  a shill for the company. Uh, nor, nor should any, I don't think any curator would, would want to take that approach. I mean, obviously we've, we've all seen shows at museums that were like, so  that company sponsored this, right?

But yeah, so  I would be very hesitant to do a show like that. Because there's also the restrictions of only thinking, only speaking in effusive, complimentary terms about a brand would be, um, like no one's learning anything there.  That's just PR. A museum should not be a PR machine for any company.

Right. Do you, is there anything that you would like to share with the audience that we didn't touch on? Actually, all of our fall exhibitions will be closing soon, so if you are listening to this in January, um, the exhibitions we will have up are a history of Nike, uh, through posters, so that's 80s and 90s posters done by Nike. Basically when Nike transformed the idea of using celebrity to sell a product.  Athletes made so much money once Nike realized like, Oh, we can use Michael Jordan to sell a shoe.

That was a, a massive turning point, uh, so the, great show on, on Nike curated by Adam Howard, on the Nike PR machine. I have a small show that will be closing in, uh, February, the, February, that's when all of these close, on Boris Buchan,  and that is, uh, it's a small show, it's like a six poster show, but these are six, like, essentially billboards.

They were the only posters, to my knowledge, to ever represent a country at the Venice Biennial. What? Yeah, exactly, that's like, what? A poster of the Venice Biennial?   Yeah,  when Yugoslavia used Boris Buchan to represent Yugoslavia during the Venice Biennial, and these are posters he created to advertise the National Theatre in Split.

Present day Croatia. And it, yes, it's about the design and the beauty of what, how he changed the way a poster functioned, um, and used a completely different visual, um, form of expression in advertising. But also you get the background of like what was happening in Yugoslavia at that time, uh, the, the breakdown of Yugoslavia.

Uh, it's just a really interesting. In the United States,  nobody's really taught a lot about that time period, so it's just a really interesting capsule show.  And then downstairs, the best thing I have ever curated, catch it while you can,  is a show on Lester Beale   and the Rural Electrification Administration.

This is the first time in the history of the posters that the entire series will be on display. No one's, no museum has ever shown the complete series before.  They will all be there!  Which is like a poster celebrity guest.  Uh, and that show is, is, uh, again, like the best thing I've ever written. It's, it's some seriously cool, everything you know about the Great Depression is wrong.

Yeah. I'm not gonna tell you what's wrong, just everything is wrong. It's a whole new look on the Great Depression. Oh, interesting, interesting. Did you write a book? No, I, I wrote, I wrote the wall text  . I did not write the book, but I, I used a book called, I think it's called Freedom from Fear. It's a Pulitzer Prize winning book.

It's over 900 pages. My Thanksgiving was reading that in the beach and, and writing the show. Uh, I read it so you don't have to. But it is landmark research  in the function of the Great Depression in the United States, which is the backbone of  my narrative for the exhibition.

So it's, it's a game changer show for me. So strongly recommend someone stop by for that. Where did the collection of the entire series come from? A private collector in the United States.  Gosh, amazing. Like, do you just trip over the entire series somewhere in some auction house? No, I mean, again, because I worked for a dealer.

I know where all  the proverbial bodies. I know where the poster bodies are buried. I'm like, yeah, of course, we all, we all know, all poster people know each other. There's no like poster surprise out there. We all, we're all buddies.  Sometimes fraught enemies, but, but generally we all know each other.

Yeah. I think that's, uh, that's true in the print, the print curator's world also. You don't have to band together and fight for the sunshine. Exactly.  All right. Well, Angelina, it's been lovely getting to know you better. Thank you so much. I've loved this. I appreciate you coming on the pod.   I think people will be really interested to hear your take on the poster situation.

I think it's fantastic. I love that you called it the poster situation, situation.  Well, I think people just sort of, you know, I mean, if they're already in the print world, they probably have the brain space to say, yeah, posters are the thing. But I think, you know, if I have any general sort of art people listening, they'll be like, posters, what?

Exactly. Uh, no, it's, it's a really fascinating, exciting field that I was not planning on getting into, but now  I'm very hooked. Um, my entire apartment is, is just, is just posters, posters for days. Um, yeah, very fun.  All right. Well, thank you again. It's been really fun.  Same here. 

   📍Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Platemark with my guest Angelina Lippert. I find her to be incredibly knowledgeable and incredibly passionate about what she does and her subject, and I just enjoyed talking to her so much.  Remember that she is going to be one of our speakers at the Brooklyn Fine Art Print Fair coming up at the end of March.

Tickets go on sale at the end of January, so by the time this is out, you will be able to do so at brooklynprintfair. org.  Thank you to Angelina for being a wonderful guest. Thanks, Angelina. And also, I, as usual, have to send out thank yous to Dan Fury of Extension Audio, Michael Diamond of Michael Diamond Music, and also Scip Barnhart and Lee Turner for helping me out with soundscapes.

As I mentioned at the top, images that Angelina and I talk about are over in the show notes at platemarkpodcast. com.  You can also help me keep the lights on at Platemark by hitting the support and donate button.  Otherwise, I think that is it.  We'll see you next time.

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