Exhibit: Give It Your Best! Workplace Posters in the United States
April 18, 2008 to January 4, 2009
More than seventy posters dating from World War I through World War II are currently on display in “Give It Your Best: Workplace Posters in the United States” at Hagley Museum and Library. From safety slogans and motivational messages to Uncle Sam and Rosie the Riveter, these posters communicate, illustrate, teach, and preach.
The exhibit opened on April 18, 2008, and will run through January 4, 2009. Exhibit is included in regular admission. Exhibit only admission is $5 for adults, $2 for children six through fourteen, and free for children five and under. Free for members. On Saturdays at 2, 3, and 4 p.m., volunteers will give a fifteen-minute exhibit tour. Use the main entrance off of Route 141.
The work of the Mather Company is a highlight of the exhibit. Charles Mather was a pioneering publisher of colorful incentive posters designed by a number of artists. Sold widely through his mail order catalogue, these posters donned the walls of many workplaces between 1923 and 1929. His posters had simple messages, general illustrations, bright colors, and bold designs. On one poster, a beautiful peacock poses with his tail feathers spread and the slogan reads, "Ability needs no fine feathers."
In addition to the workplace posters motivating particular behaviors or giving advice, posters printed during World War I and World War II often encouraged bond-buying and patriotic behavior. Teamwork Wins is the message on a World War I poster with men working and the American flag waving in the background. Uncle Sam and Rosie the Riveter were popular figures in World War II posters with slogans like Defend American Freedom and Do the job HE left behind.
"While today they are thought of as colorful and collectible examples of graphic art, these posters are also important but often overlooked documents of a period of American business when the relationship between workers and management was changing,” says Jon Williams, the Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Prints and Photographs at Hagley Museum and Library.
The Mather posters directly address workplace behavior issues of the 1920s, while the famous Norman Rockwell posters of The Four Freedoms (from World War II) show an emphasis being placed on universal values of American democracy.