"Hold Up Your End!" War Fund Week Poster
"Hold Up Your End!" War Fund Week Poster
In service and at the ready for World War I
During World War I, many women risked their lives to care for troops and took on active roles, as depicted in this poster seeking contributions for war relief efforts. Although women were still denied the right to vote, the government allowed them to serve in limited roles, ranging from dietitian to telephone operator. But the majority of women service members—more than 23,000 over the course of the war—were nurses. The government refused to grant American military nurses permanent commissioned rank and its accompanying benefits until after World War II.
Hold Up Your End! War Fund Week
- Designer
- W. B. King, American, 1880–1927
- Client
- American Red Cross, Washington, D.C., USA
- Catalogue Status
- Research in Progress
- Description
- Poster with a light yellow background depicting a Red Cross nurse in the center holding up one end of a brown stretcher and extending the other end in the foreground towards the viewer. The nurse wears a white and greenish-grey uniform, with a badge wrapped around her right arm and a nurse's hat on top of her short brown hair—both featuring a red cross against a white background. An artillery shell bursts in the air at her right behind her. Printed in black, diagonally, across the center of the poster, overlapping with the stretcher: Hold up your end! A large red cross appears directly underneath in the center of the stretcher. Printed in smaller black text, below the cross: WAR FUND WEEK / One Hundred Million Dollars.
- Credit Line
- Gift of Unknown Donor
- 1918
- Accession Number
- 1980-32-1186
- Restrictions & Rights
- CC0
- Type
- graphic design
- Object Name
- Poster
- Type
- Poster
- Medium
- Offset lithograph on paper
- Dimensions
- 70 × 52 cm (27 9/16 × 20 1/2 in.)
- made in
- USA
- Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
- Record ID
- chndm_1980-32-1186
- GUID (Link to Original Record)
- http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/kq48dd6e2d8-3bd4-4952-9a9f-40f3a784358d
