Not far from where I live is the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt national historic site which contains Springwood (FDR's home), Valkill (Eleanor's home), Top Cottage (where FDR famously hosted the King and Queen of England to a hot dog cookout), Franklin and Eleanor's grave sites, and the FDR Presidential Library and Museum. The library/museum was the first of its kind in the U.S. and the only one from which a sitting President governed the country. Yesterday the museum opened a new art exhibit from its collections curated by the National Archives on poster art of World War II. The curators selected over 200 wartime posters from the many thousands in the library archives collections. I attended the exhibit opening and took a few photos for my friends here on the site. By the way, if you are seriously interested in wartime poster art, there is a companion book to the exhibit for sale through the New Deal Bookstore at the visitor center:
As you might expect a number of the posters addressed wartime motivation themes:
Other more typical ones encourage young men to enlist in the armed services:
Another section of the exhibit displayed posters targeted to women:
A further section of the exhibit showed posters directed to the African American community. The first is of a Tuskeegee airman, the second is a poster of a man who lost his arm in the attack at Pearl Harbor, and when he recovered became a ship welder to support the war effort.
I recently posted on this site the discovery of the wreckage of the U.S.S. Juneau -- the ship on which the five Sullivan brothers died. Here is a contemporary poster from the exhibit about their deaths:
Here are just some of the other posters I saw that I thought would be of interest:
There was so much more I could have included, but for the sake of space I had to chose among them. I apologize for the photography, as I have said in other places on this site, I am the world's worst photographer. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoyed.
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