Drawing, Poster Design for Metropolis by Fritz Lang

This object is not part of the Cooper Hewitt's permanent collection. It was able to spend time at the museum on loan from The Museum of Modern Art as part of Underground Modernist: E. McKnight Kauffer.

While working on The Lodger, Kauffer submitted several poster designs to the film’s distributor, Gainsborough Pictures. The sketches were rejected, which made national headlines: “Posters Too Good for the Films,” the papers reported. “They are sort of Futurist and quite attractive,” wrote the distributor, who feared they would misrepresent the films as “expressionist” pictures. Whether the design for Metropolis was included in this submission remains unknown, but Kauffer’s film posters never went into production.

This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition Underground Modernist: E. McKnight Kauffer.