Usage Conditions May Apply Usage Conditions Apply There are restrictions for re-using this media. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's Terms of Use page. IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and image viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. More - https://iiif.si.edu View Manifest View in Mirador Viewer Usage Conditions May Apply Usage Conditions Apply There are restrictions for re-using this media. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's Terms of Use page. IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and image viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. More - https://iiif.si.edu View Manifest View in Mirador Viewer Usage Conditions May Apply Usage Conditions Apply There are restrictions for re-using this media. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's Terms of Use page. IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and image viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. More - https://iiif.si.edu View Manifest View in Mirador Viewer

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.

 Display Status

This object is not on display at the National Air and Space Museum. It is either on loan or in storage.
Object Details
Date 1943 Country of Origin United States of America Type ART-Posters, Original Art Quality Medium Poster, Advertising Artist William John Heaslip
 Physical Description Relief Halftone: Multicolor illustrated print advertising Coca-Cola. One of a series, depicting two A-20's in flight through a blue-green sky with clouds. Image within a gold and white border. Red, circular Coca-Cola logo and illustration of two glass Coca-Cola bottles on a silver tray bridges the border and the illustration at bottom left. Artist signature reproduced at bottom right. Within white border at bottom right, full text in a small black sans-serif font: "DOUGLAS A-20 'BOSTON' U.S. ARMY — ATTACK BOMBER Speed over 320 miles per hour. Equipped with fixed and flexible 50 calibre machine guns. Carries a 2000 pound bomb load." Dimensions 2-D - Unframed (H x W): 33 × 38.1cm (1 ft. 1 in. × 1 ft. 3 in.)
 Inventory Number A19772838001 Credit Line Gift of Robert M. Gaynor Copyright 1943 The Coca-Cola Company Data Source National Air and Space Museum Restrictions & Rights Usage conditions apply
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