Decorate With These (Non-Racist) 19th Century Theater Posters
One of the skills I envy the most in others is decorating a room with art. We have lived in our current apartment for three years now, and most of our walls are still vast spaces of pure white. It’s not that I don’t like looking at things on the wall. I do. But like making a playlist of new music, finding the good stuff takes time and research, especially if you have eclectic tastes. You can spend hours exploring Instagram and AllPosters hoping to find something interesting. Or you can simply decorate every bare surface in your home with vintage 19th century theater posters. This proposal comes from Dr. Bob Nicholson (who calls himself “the historian of Victorian pop culture”). He launched an extensive Twitter thread featuring some of the excellent vintage theater posters produced by Picryl , an online resource for public domain material.
Most of these posters, dating from the 1870s, come from the Library of Congress, according to Dr. Nicholson. It’s a slightly surreal take on the pop culture of the day and a harsh lesson in the ephemerality … of almost all human endeavor. Chances are, you haven’t heard of any of these plays or the actors featured in them, but at some point they were what was considered the ultimate show. Or maybe they weren’t – maybe they were equivalents to the original films of the 1890s. At such a great distance, it really doesn’t matter, and it’s kind of wonderful. Without context, posters offer nothing more than pieces of a slightly surreal Victorian era, many of which would look great if printed, framed, and hung. your bathroom.
Now I know what you are thinking. Are some of these posters racist? Oh, you better believe some of these posters are racist. In fact, there are many of them. But Picryl Gallery has thousands to choose from – any of which can be ordered in a variety of print sizes and finishes – so it doesn’t take too much effort to find one that can be hung without being legitimately bad. Human.