25 Jan

Milton Glaser's menus for the World Trade Center

One curious feature about the Glaser collection is its organizational style, which was based on the way the materials were donated by the designer. Subseries G of his Printed Materials contains many of the menus he did for businesses at the World Trade Center.

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19 Jan

James McMullan on the grid

James McMullan colors outside the lines of a self-imposed grid.

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13 Jan

Brushes with history

Detail from SVA Collection, Events: Fine Arts Department. ‘Artist and Critic: The Nature of the Relationship’ (March 1979).

Another example of paintbrushes (standing in for the artist) combined with another object (here, amid or as the hammers on a typewriter) follows the one we featured last week. The poster this detail is from originally was made to promote a panel discussion between the artists Alice Aycock, Alex Katz, and Lucio Pozzi with critics Lawrence Alloway, Hilton Kramer and moderator Donald Kuspit on the relationship between the artist and critic.

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09 Jan

Up in smoke, part 2

Liggett & Myers’ Designer Packs designed by George Tscherny.

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20 Dec 2011

Saks Fifth Avenue's Folio

Henry Wolf’s work for Saks hearkened back to his days at Harper’s Bazaar and Show.

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15 Dec 2011

Seth Siegelaub’s Xerox book

Our latest discovery—strongly recalling the original binder from Mel Bochner’s “Working Drawings…”— is a copy of Seth Siegelaub’s seminal Xerox Book.

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14 Dec 2011

Little black bag

School of Visual Arts Collection. “The School of Visual Arts is pleased to announce the appointment of Three Distinguished Women to the Faculty” poster, 1962.

In 1962, SVA appointed Dorothy Koppelman, Alice Neel, and May Stevens to the Fine Arts faculty. Neel’s somewhat opaque description of her course, “Painting People”, still manages to evoke her manner of expressiveness and psychological perception.

Person and chair in room, also space, are structural – only the person inside his structure has other unique qualities which affect the other parts of the painting…sometimes the person gives off the structure around him. Person and background are one in best paintings. Person is psychological reflection of his era.

The subtly provocative design is credited to Frank Kirk, which is not a name I’ve seen on any other SVA publications.

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06 Dec 2011

Illustrating ‘Seventeen’

Mid-century editorial illustration from the pages of Seventeen magazine.

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30 Nov 2011

Smiling faces

An assortment of Seventeen magazine advertisements from the ’50s and ’60s.

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21 Nov 2011

Back in business

Milton Glaser Collection Drawer 14 Folder 26. Detail from 100 Ways To Have Fun With an Alligator and 100 Other Involving Art Projects poster by Milton Glaser

The Glaser/SVA Archives staff of two is pleased to announced that our renovation is complete! We have even more room now for researchers and class visits, so drop us a line if you’d like stop by. Most importantly, our collections are back from storage so we’ll return to featuring great stuff from the designers and illustrators in the Archives on Container List.

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04 Nov 2011

Make a date

Some contemporary work from the Troxlers and Do-hyung Kim.

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25 Oct 2011

Fed up with mediocrity

In 1964, the Sanders Printing Corporation invited SVA’s graduating class to produce its periodic promotional publication, Folio.

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18 Oct 2011

Up in smoke

Cigarette companies were always big into advertising (perhaps because their products were largely indistinguishable), but after their marketing practices became widely seen as particularly nefarious their presence in the field faded.

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16 Sep 2011

One of these mornings

SVA Exhibitions 1285: And The Livin’ Is Easy: A Summer Show. 1-29 June 1986.

Labor Day has come and gone, and the Autumn equinox is only a week away; as a send-off to summer, I dug up this charming 1984 promotion for a show at the Visual Arts Museum, featuring a motley assortment of artists—just about everybody under the sun: Fernando Botero, Red Grooms, Alex Katz, Richard Prince, and plenty of others (click through for a list).

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14 Sep 2011

Fifteen years of heartache and aggravation

In 1969, the Mead Library of Ideas presented an exhibition of the work of Push Pin Studios, sharing the design and illustration of its many current and former members.

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