Print, Power and Persuasion

The Bard Graduate Center Gallery produces multiple exhibitions and publications each year, serving as a vital center of learning and a catalyst for engagement in the interrelated disciplines of decorative arts, design, and material culture. The gallery is celebrated in the museum world for its longstanding legacy of landmark projects dedicated to significant—yet often understudied—figures and movements in the history of decorative arts and design; these exhibitions and publications typically represent the definitive intervention on the artists and objects they investigate. BGC Gallery is also committed to generating and supporting a vast range of diverse presentations, small and large, that challenge traditional approaches to object inquiry; these examinations of material culture explore the human experience as manifest in our creation and use of “things” of all kinds. Whether originating in internal research and expertise, or in collaboration with external subject specialists, these endeavors prioritize rigorous scholarship while seeking to adhere to the field’s highest standards in production and design.

Print, Power, and Persuasion: Graphic Design in Germany, 1890-1945 examined the rich history of German graphic design and traced its role in the emergence of modern commercial print media during politically turbulent times. It presented new ways of thinking about graphic design in relation to key trends of the modern age—tradition versus modernism, nationalism versus internationalism, and artistic versus commercial values.

During this time, many of the design strategies employed in Germany had parallels in other industrialized nations eager to exploit the new forms of mass media. The graphic arts evolved as an essential element of the urban experience, transforming how business and government communicated with the public. In this context, the exhibition’s areas of focus included design reform and the graphic arts, commercial graphic design, modernism and the new typography, and the politics of graphic design during and between the First and Second World Wars.

Drawn from The Wolfsonian-FIU’s renowned collections, the exhibition featured more than 50 posters and books, periodicals, and photographs by Joseph Maria Olbrich, Herbert Bayer, El Lissitzky, and Jan Tschichold, among others. Supplementing the exhibition were a selection of decorative arts objects, including furniture, glass, metalwork, ceramics, and textiles.

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