Artists of the Airways: Airline Travel Posters from the SFO Museum Collection is the newest exhibition at San Francisco International Airport (SFO).

On view in the Aviation Museum and Library in the SFO’s International Terminal, the exhibit features the work of some wonderful airline poster artists from the early 1930s to 1980s.

Here’s a bit about the art of airline posters from the exhibition description: 

With the advent of commercial aviation in the late 1910s and 1920s, and the novelty of traveling by airplane, artists initially illustrated aircraft on their posters to attract customers through this emerging medium of mass production.

During the 1930s, as commercial carriers expanded their fleets, routes, and services, artists soon began incorporating illustrations of the destinations as well, in conjunction with the airlines’ appeal to their target audience of primarily affluent American tourists.

These often included landscapes, landmarks, people, flora, and fauna intended to promote the airline’s service to the viewer. Although posters usually contained descriptive text, poster artists created images that were designed to convey a message the viewer would immediately understand.

All the posters reproduced in this exhibition are from the SFO Museum Collection, which consists of nearly thirteen hundred airline posters, from the 1920s to the present.

Look for Artists of the Airways: Airline Travel Posters from the SFO Museum Collection pre-security in the Aviation Museum and Library in the International Terminal of San Francisco International Airport through October 5, 2025.