Produce for Victory:
Posters on the American Home Front, 1941-1945
October 30, 2003–
August 13, 2004
The Kansas Humanities Council sponsored a special Kansas tour of
the Smithsonian exhibition, Produce for Victory: Posters
on the American Home Front, 1941-1945.
Colorful posters — a visual call-to-arms — helped to
mobilize Americans to "Produce for Victory" during World
War II. The exhibition examined how posters circulated by the government
and private organizations used patriotism to urge factory workers
to increase industrial production. Addressing every citizen as a
combatant in a war of production, wartime posters united the power
of art with the power of advertising to sell the idea that the factory
and the home were also arenas for war.
Poster campaigns aimed not only to increase productivity in factories,
but also to enlarge people’s views of their responsibilities
in a time of total war. Family and home, the cornerstones of democracy,
were depicted as being directly threatened by the armies of the
Axis powers. Many of the posters proposed an idealized post-war
America, where everyone would own a home, buy goods, and raise families
in safe, secure neighborhoods—an image that is still potent
today.
Hosts for the exhibition were:
The Lyon County Historical Museum in Emporia; the Morton County
Historical Museum in Elkhart; the Lincoln Art Center in Lincoln;
the Carnegie Arts Center in Goodland; the Butler County Historical
Museum in El Dorado; and the Miami County Swan River Museum in Paola.
TOP
|
