Placemat advertising Harlem Song designed by Gail Anderson: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

This is a paper placemat from McDonald’s with an advertisement for the show Harlem Song on the front. This advertisement features small black script along the top margin text that reads “George C. Wolfe’s.” Large block text across the top half of the sheet in red and black letters read “HARLEM / SONG /COME TO WHERE / THE STREETS ARE / PAVED / WITH / RHYTHM.” To the left of this line is a rectangle that reads “A New Musical/Live on Stage / at the / World-Famous / APOLLO / THEATER.” Between the worlds ‘Harlem Song’ is a small female figure in photographic black and white. She wears a showgirl costume with feathers and sequins and a headdress with three large feathers sprouting from the top. She waves her arms in the air as the fringe on her costume twirls around her. In the bottom left corner of the advertisement is a black and white image of a man holding a microphone. Wearing dark pants and long-sleeved silky shirt, he is turned to the side and pulls the microphone off the floor at an angle as he sings into it. In the bottom right hand corner is black and white image of a woman in a dark dress. She holds her hands under her chin as she sings. There is a wide brown strip along the bottom margin of the page below the advertisement. In this brown area is ticket information, theater information, performance dates, and sponsor information. The back of the placemat has a McDonalds’s activity sheet for children, populated with McDonald’s characters. The activities include a maze and a coloring sheet.

Materials, dates and provenance

• Date: 1997
• Designed by: Gail Anderson, American, born 1962
• Printed by: McDonald's Corporation, American, founded 1955
• Subject of: Apollo Theater, American, founded 1934
• Type: placemats
• Medium: ink on paper (fiber product)
• Dimensions: H x W: 11 × 14 in. (27.9 × 35.6 cm)
• Place depicted: Harlem, New York City, New York, United States, North and Central America
• Topic: African American
• Topic: Advertising
• Topic: Cooking and dining
• Topic: Design
• Topic: Graphic design
• Topic: Musical Theatre
• Object number: 2020.11.2
• Credit Line: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Gail Anderson
• Data Source: National Museum of African American History and Culture

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of African American History and Culture through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed. The underlying object's rights statement is: © SpotCo and © McDonalds Corp. Permission required for use. Proper usage is the responsibility of the user.