High Museum of Art | Cut, Paste, Action: How Photomontage Keeps Revolutionizing Graphic Design

Photography transformed graphic design in the early twentieth century. A hundred years later, it is an even more powerful creative medium for graphic artists and designers. This talk by Ellen Lupton shows how the camera changed design forever. Explore works from Disrupting Design: Modern Posters, 1900–1940, and see how ideas from Constructivism, the Bauhaus, and the New Typography could inspire new ways to use your own pocket-sized camera.

Ellen Lupton is Senior Curator of Contemporary Design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York. Her exhibitions there include The Senses: Design Beyond Vision, Herbert Bayer: Bauhaus Master, Face Values: Exploring Artificial Intelligence, and Design and Healing: Creative Responses to Epidemics (December 2021–August 2022). She is the Betty Cooke and William O. Steinmetz Design Chair at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore, where she teaches. She has authored or co-authored several books on design processes, including Thinking with Type, Graphic Design Thinking, Graphic Design: The New Basics, Design Is Storytelling, and Health Design Thinking. Her latest book, of which she is co-author, is Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-racist, Nonbinary Field Guide for Graphic Designers (Chronicle Books, 2021). She is a 2007 AIGA Medalist and an American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellow.

Disrupting Design: Modern Posters, 1900–1940 is on view at the High Museum of Art December 10, 2021–April 24, 2022.

Please Note: This event takes place outside of regular Museum hours and does not include gallery access.

Health and Safety

The High Museum of Art’s top priority is the safety of our community, visitors, artists, and staff members. In consultation with medical and public health experts, the High is implementing a mandatory vaccine and mask policy for all talks and lectures. Audience members will be asked to show proof of vaccination, and masks are required. Audience members who are not vaccinated must provide proof of a negative COVID-19 PCR test taken within seventy-two hours of the talk’s start time or a negative COVID-19 antigen test taken within six hours of the talk’s start time. Proof of vaccination (or negative test result) must come directly from the healthcare provider that performed the vaccination (or test). Audience members can show proof of vaccination by presenting a physical vaccination card, a photo of a physical card, or a digital confirmation of vaccination.  A free resource in the Atlanta for vaccinations or COVID-19 testing is Viral Solutions.