Art of persuasion

While the counter-culture politics of 1968 fuelled student protests across American and European campuses, Leslie and Alice Schreyer developed an interest in poster art.

The couple started a collection that now stands at 3,000 - generously donated to the V&A - during their honeymoon to Mexico in that same Olympic year where they acquired a student poster showing a man gagged by the Olympic emblem bearing the words Made In The USA (pictured).

Whittled down to 100 for this excellent temporary display, this exhibition covers most of the major political events of the 20th century, from the crude but effective anti-establishment protest posters deployed mainly by the left to slickly produced government campaigns. 'Are you a girl with a star spangled heart?' reads Bradshaw Crandell's 1943 army recruitment poster aimed at women. Crandell was best known for his covergirl illustrations for Cosmo magazine and his improbably glamorous soldier with the film star looks is neatly juxtaposed with a 1942 Austrian poster of a female munitions worker with a resemblance to a Tom of Finland illustration.

Many of the later posters aren't so rare. Who isn't familiar with the Saatchi poster showing the hapless pregnant man, commissioned by the Health Education Council? Or the anti-nuclear GLC posters of the early 1980s showing grey photocollages of mushroom clouds and Grim Reaper-like gas masks by 'unofficial war artist' Peter Kennard? Provocative stuff.