"Underground Images" comprises a decades-spanning selection of promotional SVA posters, all designed by faculty members. Since the school’s early years, this work has served as advertisement for and showcase of the creative talent supported at SVA. Specifically created to be displayed on New York City subway platforms, the posters are now as inseparable from their urban environment as the school itself is. Featured designers have included Milton Glaser, Marshall Arisman, Paula Scher, and Stefan Sagmeister, among many others. "Underground Images" is curated by SVA Executive Vice President Anthony P. Rhodes, who has served as creative director for the posters since 2007, and organized by MFA Illustration as Visual Essay faculty member Mirko Ilic and SVA Galleries director Francis Di Tommaso.

Situated along a passenger walkway in one of The Hague’s central tram stations, De Affiche Galerij is a 100-meter-long glass case, specifically designed to display poster exhibitions. The gallery highlights an expansive collection of national and international posters that document free speech, protest, and historical-cultural movements through graphic design. "Underground Images" has previously been installed in less conventional venues—whether on a boat or in a repurposed pedestrian tunnel specially decorated to resemble a New York City subway station—but rarely in such a heavily-visited, public, everyday place, where thousands of commuters and city-dwellers are liable to pass by daily. The setting itself is fitting, as Di Tommaso points out, "What’s better for a train station than subway posters?" De Affiche Galerij's exhibition is on view now through March 6.

Features

SVA's iconic subway posters continue their worldwide tour.