The Daily Heller: Irish Skies Are Smiling

Description

Come Fly With Me: Aviation, Tourism and Irish Design, now on view at the National Print Museum in Dublin, examines Irish cultural history through examples of aviation- and tourism-related graphic design. It focuses on the 1940s through the 1960s, a period that marked the golden age of commercial aviation expansion, fueled by the mobility of U.S. consumers in the immediate post-WW2 period.

The exhibition, curated by Dr. Linda King, comprises travel posters, original sketches, brochures, tickets, baggage labels, in-flight publications and newsreels borrowed from a variety of Irish cultural institutions including The National Library of Ireland, The National Irish Visual Arts Library, The Irish Film Institute and the Little Museum of Dublin.

Come Fly With Me uses flight as a central thread to explore how design and print helped construct Irish national identity, support Irish modernization, fuel economic expansion and position Ireland politically on an international stage. It is an exploration of how Ireland saw itself, how it was seen by others and the legacy of those exchanges.