Film Society of Lincoln Center has unveiled the official poster for the 51st New York Film Festival, designed by British-born artist Tacita Dean. The poster includes a black and white photograph from a series Dean produced in the Czech Republic in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Today's unveiling continues a long line of professional artwork that has represented NYFF for decades, including last year's 50th anniversary poster created by Cindy Sherman.

“The photograph is one of 326 photographs that make up a work called Czech Photos, 1991-2002,” explained Dean via email. “In 1991, I travelled to Prague and bought many rolls of cheap Russian film and took the photographs very freely because the film had been so cheap. The city was newly forming after the Velvet Revolution.”

The work was later developed and sent to her, though it remained out of view for a decade until she happened upon the images not long ago.

“I left them there to be processed and printed and, months later, I received them wrapped up in small bundles, each photo printed small with white edges,” said Dean. “I rediscovered them 10 or so years later and made them into a work, presented in a small box with a desk and a chair. [This] particular photograph was a photo of a photo pinned up in a vitrine, if I remember.”

Tacita Dean was born in 1965 in Canterbury, England. She studied at Falmouth School of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art before moving to live and work in Berlin in 2000. Her solo exhibitions include Tate Britain, London; MACBA, Barcelona (2001), Tate St Ives (2005), Schaulager, Basel (2006), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2007), Nicola Trussardi Foundation, Milan; ACCA, Melbourne (2009), MUMOK, Vienna; Turbine Hall (Unilever Series), Tate Modern, London (2011) and the New Museum, New York (2012).

Her recent exhibitions include The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia and her latest film project JG at Arcadia University Art Gallery, Philadelphia (2013) and Frith Street Gallery, London (2013) and ‘c/o Jolyon, 2012-2013’ at Frith Street Gallery, London (2013). She will have solo shows in the fall at Instituto Moreira Salles, Rio de Janeiro; Fondación Botín, Santander; and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne. She will also have a retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC in 2015.

Dean has taken part in many group exhibitions including Venice Biennale (2003, 2005 and 2013), Sydney Biennale (2005 and 2014) and Sao Paulo Biennale (2006 and 2010), and she recently participated in dOCUMENTA (13) (2012). Dean was awarded the Hugo Boss Prize in 2006 and the Kurt Schwitters Prize in 2009.


Dean is represented by Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris, and Frith Street Gallery, London, where her current show of JG, 2013 and c/o Jolyon, 2012 – 2013 is on view until October 26.

This Friday, September 27, the poster will be available for purchase at various New York Film Festival locations, including the merchandise kiosk in Alice Tully Hall, the Film Society of Lincoln Center merchandise store located in the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, and the Walter Reade Theater concession stand. Posters are $25; Film Society members will receive a special discount.

Past NYFF poster artists:

Larry Rivers, 1963
Saul Bass, 1964
Bruce Conner, 1965
Roy Lichtenstein, 1966
Andy Warhol, 1967
Henry Pearson, 1968
Marisol (Escobar), 1969
James Rosenquist, 1970
Frank Stella, 1971
Josef Albers, 1972
Niki de Saint Phalle, 1973
Jean Tinguely, 1974
Carol Summers, 1975
Allan D'Arcangelo, 1976
Jim Dine, 1977
Richard Avedon, 1978
Michelangelo Pistoletto, 1979
Les Levine, 1980
David Hockney, 1981
Robert Rauchenberg, 1982
Jack Youngerman, 1983
Robert Breer, 1984
Tom Wesselman, 1985
Elinor Bunin, 1986
Sol Lewitt, 1987
Milton Glaser, 1988
Jennifer Bartlett, 1989
Eric Fischel, 1990
Philip Perlstein, 1991
William Wegman, 1992
Sheila Metzner, 1993
William Copley, 1994
Diane Arbus, 1995
Juan Gatti, 1996
Larry Rivers, 1997
Martin Scorsese, 1998
Ivan Chermayeff, 1999
Tamar Hirschl, 2000
Manny Farber, 2001
Julian Schnabel, 2002
Junichi Taki, 2003
Jeff Bridges, 2004
Maurice Pialat, 2005
Mary Ellen Mark, 2006
agnès b., 2007
Robert Cottingham, 2008
Gregory Crewdson, 2009
John Baldessari, 2010
Lorna Simpson, 2011
Cindy Sherman, 2012