San Francisco Chinese New Year Festival
Designer
Designer Unknown
Date1974
Dimensions25 x 18 in. (63.5 x 45.7 cm)
ClassificationsPoster
Credit LinePoster House Permanent Collection
Object numberPH.9669
DescriptionThis fierce-looking tiger pads toward the viewer in a poster advertising the 1974 Chinese New Year Festival in San Francisco, the largest of its kind in the United States. The original parade celebrating the Chinese New Year had been introduced to the city in the 1860s by Chinese immigrants who had arrived there in the late 1840s during the Gold Rush. It represented an effort to introduced Chinese culture to their American neighbors and to dispel pervasive anti-Chinese prejudice. In 1953, the first modern Chinese New Year Festival was established, an “Americanized” and expanded event showcasing war veterans and beauty queens to demonstrate Chinese American patriotism and anti-Communism, and to lure tourists to the increasingly “exoticized” Chinatown. In 1958, the parade came under the direction of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, mentioned on the poster, and by the mid-1970s, when the poster was issued, the huge crowds meant that the procession had to be moved to wider streets.On View
Not on view
