New Gilcrease Exhibit Shows Power Of Propaganda

The Gilcrease Museum is preparing a couple of exhibitions on the power of good propaganda. It's full of posters designed to mobilize our nation during World War 1.

The exhibit will feature posters drawn from the extensive collection of World War I materials at the university of Tulsa's McFarlin Library.

The posters are important because they represented a new kind of messaging.

Mark Dolph with the Gilcrease Museum said, "The best illustrators of the day combining the propaganda messages of the federal government in these posters."

This is a time before television and even widespread radio, so Dolph said the posters were anywhere and everywhere.

"Most Americans would see these posters in libraries, courthouses, schools, their place of work," he said.

They were so effective in mobilizing public support in World War 1, the same techniques were used for the same purposes in World War 2.

Dolph said, "That's what we are going to attempt to do with this exhibit, give people today a sense of what it was like to be an American in 1917."

A companion exhibit will open at the same time in early April. It highlights contributions of African Americans in World Wars 1 and World War 2.