DOUBLE PORTRAIT: PAULA SCHER AND SEYMOUR CHWAST, GRAPHIC DESIGNERS December 2, 2012, through April 14, 2013 Collab Gallery, Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building The annual Collab Design Excellence Award will this year honor Paula Scher and Seymour Chwast. Double Portrait: Paula Scher and Seymour Chwast, Graphic Designers is the accompanying exhibition, which celebrates the achievements of this remarkably creative couple whose illustrations and designs have transformed the design fields. This will be the first time their work will be shown together. Exploring the artists’ commonalities and differences, Double Portrait includes works ranging from record albums, books, magazine covers, and illustrations to posters, typefaces, trademarks, identities, and environmental graphics. Illustrator Seymour Chwast is graphic designer Paula Scher’s greatest influence, and also happens to be her husband. Together, they share a sensibility and approach to design. Both understand graphics as expression—often humorous—and are drawn to eclectic influences and conceptual methods, demonstrated by the more than 300 images in the exhibition, all selected and installed by the artists. Double Portrait will show the deeply personal nature of Chwast’s vision, which remains inspired by sources as diverse as German Expressionist woodcuts; Victorian typography; children’s, primitive, and folk art; plus comic books. On view will be one of Chwast’s most iconic and still provocative works of the 1960s, his anti-war poster “End Bad Breath” (1968), designed in protest of the U.S. bombing of Hanoi. In his poster “War is Good Business: Invest Your Son” (1967), Chwast used a collage style of Victorian wood-block typography, photography, and bright color to create a dense, visually busy surface that activates his ironic text message. Scher is best known for her innovative reimagining of typography as a communicative medium, her work divided between graphic identity and environmental graphics. Her ongoing work for New York’s Public Theater will be featured in Double Portrait, reflecting street typography with unconventional placements and uses of different sizes, weights, and styles of type. Her poster for the theater’s production of “Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk” (1995) sets the play’s title and theater logos around the silhouetted image of the tap artist in different visual rhythms which convey the sound of the performance. Scher’s environmental graphics for the New Jersey Performing Arts Center’s Lucent Technologies Center for Arts Education (2001) utilizes super graphics to redraw the exterior of the sixty-year old school building in typography. Kathryn Bloom Hiesinger, The J. Mahlon Buck, Jr. Senior Curator of European Decorative Arts after 1700, said, “It is an extraordinary opportunity to be able to view Scher and Chwast’s work, side by side, in a museum setting. Seen in concert, their iconic images, social commentary, and commercial relevance speak to graphic design’s ability to transcend the medium’s perceived boundaries. Thanks to the efforts and generosity of Collab, we are the only Museum in the country to regularly devote our galleries to exhibitions about contemporary designers.” This exhibition is made possible by Lisa S. Roberts and David W. Seltzer. Additional support is provided by Collab, a group that supports the Museum’s modern and contemporary design collection and programs. In-kind support is provided courtesy of Alcorn McBride Inc. About the Artists Seymour Chwast (b.1931) studied at New York’s Cooper Union and, after graduating, co-founded the Push Pin Studios in 1954 with classmates Milton Glaser and Edward Sorel. Widely influential, Push Pin broadened the boundaries of modern design by reintroducing historic graphic styles and techniques, transforming them into a new, contemporary vocabulary. Throughout a varied career in promotion and publishing, Chwast’s designs have been used in advertising, animated films, and editorial, corporate, and environmental graphics for such clients as Mobil, Sony, Forbes, and Columbia Records, and his illustrations have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Time. He has created more than 100 posters and has designed and illustrated more than 40 children’s books. His work has been the subject of Seymour Chwast: The Left Handed Designer (Abrams, 1985) and Seymour: The Obsessive Images of Seymour Chwast (Chronicle, 2009). Museums such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Library of Congress have collected his posters, and he has lectured and exhibited worldwide. Paula Scher (b. 1948) studied at the Tyler School of Art, Corcoran College of Art and Design, Maryland Institute College of Art, and Moore College of Art & Design. She began her professional career as an art director designing record covers for CBS and Atlantic Records, developing an eclectic approach to typography that became highly influential. In 1991, Scher became a partner in Pentagram, the distinguished international design consultancy. Scher has developed identity and branding systems, promotional materials, environmental graphics, packaging, and publication designs for a broad range of major corporate and institutional clients including, among others, the Museum of Modern Art, New York City Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the New York Philharmonic, Bloomberg L.P., Citibank, Microsoft, Tiffany & Co. and the Sundance Film Festival as well as the Public Theater and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Throughout her career, Scher has been the recipient of many industry honors and awards and served on numerous boards. Her work is represented in the permanent collections of museums including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Both Scher and Chwast have received the medal of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, their profession’s highest honor, Chwast in 1985, Scher in 2001. In 1983 and 1998, respectively, Chwast and Scher have been inducted into the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame. About the Design Excellence Award: In conjunction with Double Portrait: Paula Scher and Seymour Chwast, Graphic Designers, Collab, the group of design professionals that supports the modern and contemporary design collection at the Museum, will present the 2012 Design Excellence Award to the artists on the evening of December 1, 2012. The Design Excellence Award honors a renowned designer or manufacturer who has enriched the world with his or her unique creative vision. The award ceremony will take place in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Van Pelt Auditorium and will include an illustrated lecture by the artists. About the Student Design Competition: 2012 marks the 20th anniversary of Collab’s Student Design Competition, which challenges college students studying architecture and industrial design to be inspired by the annual Design Excellence Award winner and corresponding exhibition. The 2012 challenge was entitled "Game On" and asked students to redesign and/or repackage an iconic game or create their own. Social Media: Facebook: philamuseum; Twitter: philamuseum; Tumblr: philamuseum; YouTube: PhilaArtMuseum; Instagram: @philamuseum Exhibition Hours: Tuesday through Sunday: 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. The exhibition will be closed Christmas Day and open during normal hours on New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and Presidents' Day. The Philadelphia Museum of Art is one of the largest museums in the United States, with a collection of more than 227,000 works of art. The Museum’s many galleries present painting, sculpture, works on paper, photography, decorative arts, textiles, and architectural settings from Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the United States. Its facilities include a landmark main building; the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building; the Rodin Museum, and two historic houses in Fairmount Park, Mount Pleasant and Cedar Grove. The Museum offers a wide variety of activities for public audiences, including special exhibitions, programs for children and families, lectures, concerts, and films. For additional press information and images, contact Gigi Lamm in the Marketing and Communications department of the Philadelphia Museum of Art at [email protected] or 215-684-7860. For general information, call 215- 763-8100, or visit the Museum's website at philamuseum.org. .