The Postcard Age: Selections from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection
The MFA will present The Postcard Age: Selections from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection, the first general exploration of the postcard as an artistic medium at a major museum. It will feature 450 postcards from Europe and the United States, drawn from the Leonard A. Lauder Postcard Archive, one of the world’s finest and most comprehensive collections of postcards, and a promised gift to the MFA. The exhibition will explore the postcard craze that swept the world in the decades around 1900, when billions of cards were bought, mailed, and pasted into albums—the period’s Twitter, email, Flickr, and Facebook, all wrapped into one. Acclaimed artists turned to the new medium, but one of the great pleasures of postcards is how some of the most beautiful and interesting cards were made by artists whose names are barely known. Taking in themes as varied as travel and celebrity, sports and war, The Postcard Age will trace how historical and cultural themes of the modern age—enthralling, exciting, and sometimes disturbing—played out on the postcard’s tiny canvas.
