Northwestern University Posters Collection

The collection contains posters whose dates range roughly from 1900 to 2019 assembled by the University Archives. It is an expanding collection, with new items added as they come in.

The posters within the collection relate to events held on campus, including music and dance performances, film screenings, talks, seminars, panels, book talks, auditions, career fairs, job opportunities, research studies and course openings, among others. Some events reoccur across time. These events include Homecoming, sports game schedules, concert series held at Bienen School of Music, performances by on-campus theater groups such as Waa-mu and the Northwestern Student Theatre Coalition (StuCo), and, from 2010 onward, One Book Northwestern.

Though the majority of events take place on Evanston campus, there are also some off-campus events and organizations present in the collection. For instance, the collection includes posters posted by organizations such as Citibank (advertising credit cards) and the Red Cross (advertising blood drives), as well as events sponsored by museums, the Chicago Cultural Center, the Illinois Arts Council, and universities such as Columbia College Chicago and the University of Kansas.