Australia Fly Qantas
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Object Details
- Sponsor
- Qantas (Queensland & Northern Territory Aerial Services Ltd.)
- Physical Description
- australia FLY QANTAS. Color offset photolithograph print advertising service to Australia with a collage of Australian scenes. At the top is a large photograph of a woman scuba diving in Coral Cave. Beneath is the text “Australia, Fly Qantas” in a modern sans-serif font. In the bottom half is a series of images, clockwise from the upper left: Ayers Rock (Uluru) in the Northern Territory, Smiggin Holes ski resort in New South Wales, Dunk Island on the Barrier Reef, the Todd River in the Northern Territory, and a sheep ranch at Tarwa near Canberra. In the center of these photographs is a small iconographic drawing of a koala bear. Full text at bottom: Australia’s Round-The-World Airline.
- Summary
- Fly Now: The National Air and Space Museum Poster Collection
- Throughout their history, posters have been a significant means of mass communication, often with striking visual effect. Wendy Wick Reaves, the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery Curator of Prints and Drawings, comments that "sometimes a pictorial poster is a decorative masterpiece-something I can't walk by without a jolt of aesthetic pleasure. Another might strike me as extremely clever advertising … But collectively, these 'pictures of persuasion,' as we might call them, offer a wealth of art, history, design, and popular culture for us to understand. The poster is a familiar part of our world, and we intuitively understand its role as propaganda, promotion, announcement, or advertisement."
- Reaves' observations are especially relevant for the impressive array of aviation posters in the National Air and Space Museum's 1300+ artifact collection. Quite possibly the largest publicly-held collection of its kind in the United States, the National Air and Space Museum's posters focus primarily on advertising for aviation-related products and activities. Among other areas, the collection includes 19th-century ballooning exhibition posters, early 20th-century airplane exhibition and meet posters, and twentieth-century airline advertisements.
- The posters in the collection represent printing technologies that include original lithography, silkscreen, photolithography, and computer-generated imagery. The collection is significant both for its aesthetic value and because it is a unique representation of the cultural, commercial and military history of aviation. The collection represents an intense interest in flight, both public and private, during a significant period of its technological and social development.
- Credit Line
- Gift of the Washington Airline Society
- Inventory Number
- A19960143000
- Restrictions & Rights
- Usage conditions apply
- Type
- ART-Posters, Original Art Quality
- Medium
- Poster, Advertising, Commercial Aviation
- Dimensions
- 2-D - Unframed (H x W): 101 × 63.5cm (3 ft. 3 3/4 in. × 2 ft. 1 in.)
- Country of Origin
- Australia
- See more items in
- National Air and Space Museum Collection
- National Air and Space Museum
- Record ID
- nasm_A19960143000
- Metadata Usage (text)
- Not determined
- GUID (Link to Original Record)
- http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/nv936179541-f1d8-4495-a8bd-e28f9976851f
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