Grove City College archivist Hilary Walczak recently stumbled upon 175 American propaganda posters locked away in a library cabinet. Dating back to the Second World War, they haven’t been seen since the library opened over 60 years ago.
“I found these cabinets,” Walczak is quoted as saying at CBS news. “They were all locked. And so I said, ‘What is behind here?’ And nobody’s ever looked. And they’re like, you know, we have this random box of keys. You can try them. So I kind of took the box of keys and I tried each and every individual key, until I found the right one, and luckily I did find the right one to that case.”
To her surprise, she found a World War II poster. Then another. And another.
In total, she recovered 175 posters. A sampling of them can be found here.
The propaganda posters were designed to inspire Americans on the home front during WWII. Government agencies, business, and private organizations issued the posters, most of them coming from the U.S. Office of War Information.
The estimated total value of the posters is $40,000. Thirty of them are scheduled to go on display this week at the Gallery of Pew Fine Arts Center.
More about this incredible find here. More posters here.
Image credit: Grove City College.
