Book Club Review with Nicholas Lowry and Angelina Lippert – PRINT Magazine

Did you miss our conversation with Nicholas Lowry and Angelina Lippert? Register here to watch this episode of PRINT Book Club.

Until the launch of Wonder City of the World (Book and Exhibition) there had never been an exhibition on New York travel posters. We couldn’t believe it! In fact, no one had written a book about it. Not even Steven Heller, PRINT’s prolific design historian. Poster House wanted to change that.

Nicholas Lowry (Poster House board member, author and antiques expert – you may know his face from Antiques Roadshow) and Angelina Lippert (Chief Curator of Poster House) set out to create an exhibition on this type of poster design. Abrams then suggested a book. The sheer volume of posters worthy of our discussion and appreciation would not have fit on the walls of Poster House – the book became a great vehicle for exploring this fascinating piece of design history.

The book’s name comes from one of the many nicknames given to New York City throughout its history as a tourist destination: for immigrants seeking a better life, for hordes who came to see the 1939 World’s Fair, for the thousands of tourists who have flocked to the city’s attractions for centuries. The original name of the exhibition was “Mythmaking and the Metropolis”—we love that, FYI!—but the book’s editor wanted to simplify it, and so the book “Wonder City” was born.

Wonder is in order. The collection offers an idealized portrait of New York City, accompanied by essays on the design of the posters, the artists (if known; most are not), and the artists’ portrayal of the city. Our discussion covered all sorts of fun facts and little-known details about New York and the history of advertising the city around the world. The subject proved to be the ultimate rabbit hole for Lowry.

I haven’t found a rabbit hole I didn’t want to jump down.

Nicholas Lowry, author and curator

If you would like to delve deeper into this topic yourself, register here to watch the recording of our fascinating discussion with Lowry and Lippert.

I don’t have a copy of Wonder City of the World: Travel Poster New York? You can order one here.

If you are in New York, visit the Poster House exhibition, which features a selection of these incredible artifacts of design history. Wonder City of the World is on view through September 8. Upcoming exhibitions at Poster House include everything from Lester Beall to the London Underground to the Munich Olympics, the New York subway, Nike and more. For more information, visit posterhouse.org.

See you next month!