This fall, the Museum of the City of New York presents Art Deco City: New York Postcards from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection, an exhibition that features a collection of historical postcards that tell the story of the city’s ascendance as a global emblem of culture and modernity during the interwar years.
On view from September 27, 2024, through February 17, 2025, Art Deco City highlights the role of the postcard medium, through the Art Deco aesthetic and the development of modern graphics and cutting-edge technology, in broadcasting New York’s cosmopolitan allure to global audiences and positioning the city as a capital of the world. The exhibition is accompanied by objects that contextualize the postcards on view, encompassing decorative arts, fashion, photography, drawings, film, and architectural models from the MCNY collection.
Featuring over 250 postcards from the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, Art Deco City showcases the bold new look of Art Deco, a style that heralded New York’s arrival as a modern metropolis and a hub of architecture, design, fashion, and culture. During these decades, postcards fulfilled the role social media plays today; they captured the glamour of city nights through images of neon-lit streets, restaurants, and entertainment venues, and showcased the novelty of modern urban life through depictions of setback skyscrapers and new modes of transportation. The exhibition explores how this pervasive form of communication encapsulated the city’s elegance amidst the challenges of the Great Depression and the political turmoil of the era.
Through innovations in printing technology, Art Deco-era postcards transmitted vibrant images and messages of this trailblazing “skyscraper city” around the globe, making Art Deco landmarks like the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, and Radio City Music Hall icons of New York architecture. Postcard artists depicted these structures with dynamic forms and brilliant colors characteristic of the Art Deco style and were instrumental in promoting the “city of tomorrow” at the 1939–40 World’s Fair.
Art Deco City is organized in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and is drawn from the Leonard A. Lauder Postcard Archive of over 100,000 postcards. The exhibition’s alluring, candy-colored postcards circulated during Mr. Lauder’s childhood when he began using
his allowance to purchase them in multiples at the Woolworth’s five-and-dime in the Empire State Building.