♪ >> coming up on NYC ARTS, a trip to poster house in Chelsea.

The first museum in the U.S. devoted solely to the art, history, and impact of the medium.

>> you see an image and you understand the purpose of the poster right away.

In fact, that is what makes a good, effective poster.

If it doesn't communicate its purpose to you in less than a second, it has failed.

>> and a visit to Moynahan train Hall, a visionary transformation of the nation's busiest transportation hub which includes dynamic and colorful installations of public art.

Nicholas: Elmgreen and Dragset have created a work that they've called The Hive, a sculpture that hangs down from the ceiling comprised of dozens of high-rise buildings of all shapes and sizes.

They've sort of been inspired by buildings from all over the world, as well as their own architectural inventions.

>> funding for NYC ARTS is made possible by Jody and John Arnold, the fund for dance, the Ambrose foundation, Jeffrey Brown, Charles and Valerie, the Milton and Sally Avery arts foundation ELROY AND TERRY , KRUMHOLZ FOUNDATION THE NANCY WIDEWATER FOUNDATION AND ELLEN AND JAMES S. MARCUS .

THIS PROGRAM IS SUPPORTED, IN PART, BY PUBLIC FUNDS FROM THE NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS IN PARTNERSHIP with the city Council.

Additional funding provided by members of 13 and by Swann auction galleries.

>> SWANN AUCTION GALLERIES.

WE HAVE A DIFFERENT WAY OF LOOKING AT AUCTIONS, OFFERING VINTAGE BOOKS AND FINE ART SINCE 1941.

WORKING TO COMBINE KNOWLEDGE WITH ACCESSIBILITY, WHETHER YOU ARE A LIFELONG COLLECTOR OR A FIRST-TIME BUYER, OR LOOKING TO SELL.

INFORMATION AT SWANNGALLERIES.COM.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Paula: good evening and welcome to NYC ARTS.

I Paula Zahn on location at the am Alice Austen House on Staten island.

A retired Quaker dry goods merchant bought this property in 1844 and it became the family home for more than 100 years.

While Staten Island had been a summer refuge for New Yorkers trying to escape the heat and crowded conditions in Manhattan, the Austiens put love and care into their home, clear comfort.

Renovations in the late 19th century transforms the home from a modest Dutch farmhouse to a Victorian Gothic cottage.

Today, the house is named for his granddaughter who photographed a changing world at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

She received a camera at the age of 11, skillfully developing her craft to become one of the first women photographers to work outside the confines of a traditional studio.

She began by photographing life on Staten Island in the 1880's, capturing the island's historic homes, maritime traffic, and farmland.

It was here that she began her lifelong pursuit of documenting the people, places, and things around her.

Alice took her camera out into the world, returning to comfort, where she had set up a dark room in a small hallway closet on the second floor.

She worked all hours of the night until her prints met her own high standards.

Before 1900, there was no running water in the dark room so Alice would wash her prints at the backyard pump.

Of special interest to Alice were the guardians of clear comfort where she frequently posed her family, friends, and pets.

Her grandfather had been passionate about gardening and shared his love of nature with Alice.

They installed walking paths and landscaped the property with unique trees, shrubs, and flowers, some of which were brought directly from Asia.

Any of her most notable photographs were taken on the front lawn overlooking the New York Narrows.

On View today in the house's contemporary gallery space is an expert it -- exposition with the photography of Laura Nichols, who was born in 1883.

She lived out west in the mining town of encampment, Wyoming.

The images focused on the role of pioneer women in the early 20th century.

They chronicled the domestic, social, and economic aspects of this sparsely populated frontier throughout the early 20th century.

Currently on view at the Maritime collection on Staten Island is an exhibition called picturing the water which explores Alice's deep connection to local and international waterways and the vessels that traveled across them.

Alice took more than 1500 photographs of ships and waterways, including views of the New York harbor from her home.

These images are a curated selection by Victoria, executive director of the Alice Austen House, who spent a year closely studying Alice's not a coworker.

This is the first time that many of these newly printed photographs have been made accessible to the public.

The exhibition is On View through May 18.

On our program tonight, we will visit poster house, the first museum in the United States devoted solely to the art, history, and impact of the medium.

Located in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York, the collection contains more than 10,000 posters, spanning the late 1800s to the present day.

Or than 100 countries are represented.

Currently On View are two main exhibitions.

Art Deco, commercializing the avant-garde, featuring more than 50 works that show the rise and fall of the geometric, bold, and colorful style which came to be known as Art Deco.

The exhibition shows how Art Deco became the first global arts movement.

From railway advertisements from Japan to an airline ad for the former Yugoslavia and promotional posters for international sports competitions of all kinds, and many more.

Each celebrating their respective country's expression of modern times.

The exhibition tells a story of the cultural, social, and global economic shifts that happened before and after the great depression.

The value of this rare collection exceeds $2.5 million in posters, most of which have rarely been shown or have few copies.

We tried to warn you, environmental crisis posters, 1972 2020.

Traces of modern global history of environmental activism.

The exhibition features 33 works that range in style from whimsical to apocalyptic.

All have shaped worldwide public debate on environmental issues such as clean energy, endangered species, and air and water quality.

The works examine international awareness campaigns and federal advertisements which addressed environmental crises as they evolved from regional problems to a global disaster.

They Mark important events and movements including the first Earth Day in 1970 and the creation of the EPA in the U.S. a few years later.

Many were commissioned by large corporations and aims to encourage such behaviors as taking individual responsibility and ethical risk -- ethical consumption of resources.

While the companies themselves were at the same time actively lobbying against environmental legislation.

Artists, whose posters are On View, include Amos Kennedy, Robert, Tom, and Milton, among others.

Both exhibitions will be On View through February 25th.

>> I am Angelina, the chief curator of poster house, the first museum in the United States dedicated to the art and history of the poster.

The poster is a public facing notice meant to persuade that Mary's word and image.

This phenomenon really began in the late 1860's, when the father of the poster perfected the already existing color lithographic process so posters could be made quickly using the full spectrum of the rainbow.

Prior to this time, posters were primarily textbased so they were broadsides and that required that you had to be literate in order to understand them.

Posters do away with that.

You see an image and you understand the purpose of the poster right away.

In fact, that is what makes a good, effective poster.

If a poster does not communicate its purpose to you in less than a second, it has failed.

Poster house typically has two or three exhibitions on view at any time in addition to our permanent poster history timeline which you can see behind me.

The beginning of this timeline starts with the father of the poster.

So because the earliest posters are done via stone lithography, every color making up that poster would have to be printed separately and by combining those colors, that is how you get the full rainbow effect in any given poster and that is what he invented.

And what makes this poster incredibly special is it is actually a progressive proof.

A progressive proof is really rare because a printer would typically only make one and it was away for a printer to determine if all the different colors separated the line up and if it prints cleanly.

He designed this Ray department store.

However, it rejected it.

We don't know why because it is a beautiful image.

The next stop on the history timeline focuses on the father of modern advertising.

One of the things you will notice in this poster is that the background is a flat saturated black.

He was the first poster designer to really offset a central image with a sharp, flat, saturated background.

He put the woman in a green dress on a red horse.

But what does that have to do with chocolate?

This poster is for chocolate and that was the entire point.

This is the first time we see a mascot born in advertising.

In fact, people were so captivated by this beautiful image that they would go to their local store and instead of asking for the chocolate by name, they would instead say, you know, can you give me that -- you know, the lady on the red horse?

that is how that brand became memorable and known throughout Paris.

The next stop on our timeline is the poster for one of the richest histories and posters.

They have created literally hundreds of posters.

All our stand out.

This is very interesting because it is Italian Art Deco.

Italian Art Deco in advertising combined a lot of different styles so you will get elements of futurism, cubism, and the Italians loved to play with shadow and deep, rich colors and their posters so you will get a lot of that in this sign.

This is one by favorite posters from the collection.

It is for the film "the last flight."

Poster design in Russia at this time under Lennon was a hotbed of creativity.

These -- Lenin was a hotbed of creativity.

They would get the title or may a film still, very minimal information.

I also often have to tell people that this is not photo montage.

The ability to insert a large photograph into posters was not really available at this time.

Instead, what they would do is project a film still onto the wall of their studio and then trace over that figure and also, this style of art would be made completely illegal under Stalin so it's a short, beautiful, important period in poster history.

After that, we look at the mid century posters of Switzerland and the international typographic style.

These posters are amazing because you get an array of printing techniques all in one poster.

After that, we focus on psychedelic posters where we have nine amazing examples of the most important psychedelic poster artist from 1966 to 1970.

An incredibly short, explosive period in poster design.

All these posters advertised the main venues for psychedelic music at that time.

The Avalon as well as a ton of bands you will absolutely no like big Brother and the holding company.

After that, we focus on Paula and her remarkable contributions to public theater and what is now almost 30 years of advertising for one single institution.

She helped redefine how theatrical advertising was done in New York, making it as vibrant and explosive as the theater itself.

For the process, we focus on a favorite designer of mine.

He combines a layering technique that makes his posters completely unique.

He is a contemporary working in Detroit which means he's making his living making posters today.

Which is amazing.

Poster house is still collecting important posters made today.

We actively collect posters from all around the world, from all major and minor ad agencies so please stop by and see them.

♪ Paula: for more information on cultural events in our area, please sign up for our free weekly email at NYC-Arts.Org/email.

Top five picks will keep you up-to-date all year round and be sure to connect with NYC ARTS on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

♪ Paula: next, we will visit the new boy in a train hall, a visionary transformation of the nation's busiest transportation hub.

Located across from Penn Station, the hall is named after Senator Patrick Moynahan who first promoted the idea of restoring the area to its former glory.

The original Pennsylvania Station had been demolished in the early 1960's to make way for Madison Square Garden.

The 1914 James Farley Post Office is the architectural sister of the old Penn station, also designed by white.

It has been converted into a state-of-the-art 21st-century transit center for Long Island Railroad and Amtrak passengers and a grand public space and source of civic pride for all New Yorkers.

Three installations were commissioned for the site by New York State in partnership with Public Art fund.

In the ticketed waiting room adjacent to the main concourse, his photographic panels re-create and pay tribute to the original Penn station.

At the entrances at 31st and 33rd streets, dynamic and colorful ceiling installations by an artistic duo as well as an artist welcome everyone to the station.

These public artworks make Moynahan train hall a destination in its own right, whether or not you are catching a train.

Nicholas, director and chief curator of public art fund, tells us about the artist and artworks selected for the project.

>> it was important to all of us that the artworks commissioned for this wonderful new civic landmark would really express something about where, who, and what we are.

New York City is a vibrant, open , democratic place, and we wanted to reflect that.

We wanted to reflect the fact that this building brings together so many layers of the past, the present, and the future.

In each artist could, through their own creative imagination, capture something unique about that.

Stan Douglas has created a work that he has called Penn station's half-century.

Because the original Penn station really only existed for a half-century.

It was an iconic New York City landmark, a magnificent building designed by -- that was tragically demolished.

Stan has digitally created the interior of the original Penn station and then photographed performers dressed in period costume, reenacting his own imagination of events that happened and when you look at the moments that stand shows, they are not necessarily world changing events.

It's more quirky moments that meant something, that express the way Penn station functioned in the life of New York City.

It was a place where things happened like an impromptu vaudeville show, when performers were stranded here overnight in a snowstorm.

Or the tender moments of goodbye, when servicemen were going off to war.

His work features a number of amazing people but who have been largely forgotten, extraordinary performers like Bert Williams, pioneering labor organizers, like Angelo, or even in notorious criminal -- a notorious criminal, the bandit.

Stan has reminded us about and preserved them for all of us to understand more about what shaped who we are today.

His work, in a sense, brings a tremendous energy and vitality to a classical genre, the Renaissance style ceiling fresco, which he has reinvented as a contemporary stained glass ceiling, so in another way, it brings together these ideas of the past, the present, and the future, because while it gestures to art history, his characters are contemporary New Yorkers.

Break dancers, people who are actually performing extraordinary acrobatic, athletic, creative gestures, and an art form that was invented in New York City.

And that we see these black bodies tumbling through space and floating through the air.

They have created a work that they have called the hive, a sculpture that hangs down from the ceiling, comprised of dozens of high-rise buildings of all shapes and sizes, and when you look at it, you start to think, wait a minute, I recognize that building.

That looks like the Empire State building.

Or didn't I see that in London?

Or Hong Kong?

They have been inspired by buildings from all over the world as well as their own architectural inventions.

I think the artists chose to call it the hive because they really loved the idea of the way the contemporary mega city is somehow like a beehive, a growing, evolving, complex structure, and I think for them, a train station and the idea of travel, and even the idea of New York City is about connections, and the energy that is created when people come together.

What is it that transforms a public space into a truly civic space?

What is it that captures the spirit of New York City?

There is no way to simply illustrate that, but a great artist can, through their imaginative vision, through their creativity, create something that does capture something about what it is to be alive today.

But something that can also tell us something about the past and something about the future, and that can exist for generations to come.

Paula: next week on NYC ARTS -- >> we are at the Jewish Museum at my exhibition of the colors of Ginsberg.

She started wearing the colors as a way to distinguish herself from the black down, the more boring appearance, and to feminize herself, and then she started getting gifts.

She started getting colors that were commissioned, and they became another symbol for her, without words.

She was a woman of words.

But this was visual messages, something I really relate to as a visual artist.

♪ Paula: and a profile of photographer and video artist, Latoya, whose work follows in the social documentary tradition of Walker Evans and Gordon Parks.

>> it is a duty, a privilege, and an honor to be able to use these cameras to serve others and to bring a real human story forward in a complex situation.

♪ Paula: I hope you have enjoyed our program tonight.

I'm Paula Zahn on location at the Alice Austen House on Staten Island.

Thanks for watching.

See you next time.

To enjoy more of your favorite segments on NYC-Arts, visit our website at NYC-Arts.Org/email.

-- NYC-Arts.Org.

♪ >> when I listen to the lyrics come I suddenly thought, that is what I want to do with my life.

>> My pictures reside in very private moments.

Collects my primary way of playing the piano is by improvising.

>> You are in some respects on sacred ground.

A woman came to see me perform and said, how would you like to play Billie Holiday?

>> I think one of the essential things that we learned is that Matisse used pens to compose his work.

>> You always are surprised when you are doing a piece that is 100 years ago and you think, my gosh, this could be now.

>> The very first of that moment of realization.

>> Somebody will come and present something and you get applause.

Great, you know?

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> funding for NYC Arts is made possible by Thea petschek iervolino foundation Jody and john arnhold The lewis "Sonny" turner fund for dance The ambrose monell foundation Elise jaffe and jeffrey brown Charles and valerie diker The milton and sally avery arts foundation Elroy and terry krumholz foundation The nancy widewater foundation And ellen and james s. Marcus .

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of cultural affairs in partnership with the city Council.

Additional funding provided by members of thirteen.

And by swann auction galleries.

>> Swann auction galleries.

We have a different way of looking at auctions, offering vintage books and fine art since 1941.

Working to combine knowledge with accessibility, whether you are a lifelong collector or a first-time buyer, or looking to sell.

Information at swanngalleries.Com.