READING, PA.- The Reading Public Museum presents Call to Duty: World War Posters, which opened September 13, 2014 and continues through January 4, 2015. This exhibition is located in The Museum’s Second Floor Galleries.

In addition, this exhibition, drawn from the Reading Public Museum’s own permanent collection, will be presented at the Dayton Art Institute, Dayton Ohio, from July through October, 2015. It will be the show’s first tour stop after it closes in Reading, and will be part of Reading Public Museum’s ever-expanding Touring Exhibitions offerings.

The exhibition, highlighting more than 70 original World War I and World War II posters helps to tell the story of the massive human efforts put forth during these twentieth-century global conflicts. Displayed in public locations such as post offices, train stations, city halls, schools, and businesses, these war posters and, perhaps more importantly, the messages they communicated, were found everywhere throughout the United States.

The impressive selection of posters explores themes of recruitment of men into the armed services; funding of the wars through bonds and other methods; efforts on the home front, such as conservation and work ethic, which contributed to victory; campaigns by service organizations such as the Salvation Army, YMCA and Boy Scouts; and the role of women in the war effort. Many of the posters are American, but examples from Canada, France, Great Britain and other ally nations are also featured.

Artists such as J. C. Leyendecker, James Montgomery Flagg, Howard Chandler Christy, Edward Penfield, Francis Luis Mora, Jessie Wilcox Smith, and Norman Rockwell, among others, are included in this exhibition.