The Golden Age of Entertainment at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries shows the poster as an impressive medium that shaped modern visual communication and the form of leisure. 

The massive development of organized entertainment, which took place from the late 19th century onwards, was closely linked to the growth of modern metropolitan society, which offered various forms of entertainment and spectacle, from cabarets, carnivals, and nightclubs to illusionist shows and sporting events. The pictorial poster, whose golden age at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries laid the foundations for modern visual communication, played a fundamental role in this process. Posters themselves became a spectacle – a spectacular advertising medium that shaped perceptions of entertainment, travel and leisure. The exhibition presents more than one hundred posters from the pre-World War II period, created by some of the most important Czech and international figures in the field, including Jules Chéret, Alfons Mucha, Luděk Marold, Karel Šimůnek, Arnošt Hofbauer, František Kysela, Vilém Rotter, Emil Weiss, Leo Heilbrun, František Zelenka or Ladislav Sutnar, as well as anonymous authors. 

The exhibition shows posters not only as artifacts of graphic design, but also as historical sources, telling about the history and realities of institutional entertainment, its places and popular protagonists. 

Works from the most important public and private collections of poster art are exhibited, represented mainly by the holdings of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague, as well as the holdings of the West Bohemian Museum in Pilsen, the North Bohemian Museum in Liberec, and the private collections of the H – Posters Collection and the Daniel Trávníček Poster Collection. 

The exhibition was prepared in cooperation with the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague.