Poster House Receives Donation Of Rare Public Theater Posters From Graphic Designer Paula Scher

Poster House announces that legendary graphic designer and Pentagram partner Paula Scher will be donating 55 posters from her personal archive to the museum's permanent collection. These posters include rare prints of Scher's award-winning and hugely influential works for The Public Theater from the mid-1990s, along with a number of personal and other commercial projects.

"These posters are a landmark addition to our permanent collection," says Poster House Director Julia Knight. "Paula Scher is among the most renowned graphic designers in the world and we are honored to be housing such incredible examples of her innovative typography and unparalleled sense of design."

The first museum in the United States dedicated exclusively to the global history of posters, Poster House opened its doors for the first time this past June. Currently still on view are its two opening exhibitions, Alphonse Mucha: Art Nouveau/Nouvelle Femme, celebrating the famed Art Nouveau illustrator and graphic artist Alphonse Mucha, and Designing Through the Wall: Cyan in the 1990s, which sheds light on the groundbreaking German graphic design duo. Scher designed the museum's logo and visual branding in her role at Pentagram.

Described as the "master conjurer of the instantly familiar," Scher straddles the line between pop culture and fine art. Iconic, smart, and accessible, her images have entered into the American vernacular. A partner at Pentagram's New York office since 1991, Scher began her career as an art director in the 1970s and early 80s, when her eclectic approach to typography became highly influential. In the mid-1990s, her identity for The Public Theater fused high and low into a wholly new symbology for cultural institutions and won the coveted Beacon Award for integrated corporate design strategy in 1996. Her graphic identities for Citibank and Tiffany & Co. have become case studies for the contemporary regeneration of American brands.

An exciting new addition to New York's cultural landscape, Poster House draws out hidden histories of poster art as never before, maps their continued role in today's media landscape, and encourages future design as the medium is reclaimed and reworked by successive generations in order to communicate quickly, effectively, and seductively to an audience constantly on the move.