Poster for the musical Cats: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

Poster for the original Broadway production of the musical Cats.

Achieving an eighteen-year run of 7,397 consecutive performances at Manhattan's Winter Garden Theatre, Cats is one of the longest-running musicals in Broadway history. The show, which premiered in London in 1981, is the work of composer-impresario Andrew Lloyd Webber, who envisioned a musical based on poet T. S. Eliot's work, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. The original London and New York productions were enhanced by designer John Napier's imaginative scenery and costumes. The most expensive Broadway musical ever produced at the time, Cats recouped its $5.5 million production cost many times over through its long and successful run. The show’s spectacular sets, costumes, and innovative special effects, and its emphasis on visual pageantry and epic scale over dialogue and plot were key components of the “megamusical” genre that dominated Broadway theater in the 1980s and 90s.

Materials, dates and provenance

• date made: 1982-2000
• Object Name: Poster
• Physical Description: paper (overall material)
• Physical Description: ink (overall material)
• Measurements: overall: 212 cm x 104.2 cm; 83 7/16 in x 41 in
• Subject: Music
• Subject: Musical Theater
• ID Number: 2000.0219.07
• catalog number: 2000.0219.07
• accession number: 2000.0219
• Data Source: National Museum of American History

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed.