University Art History Professor Jordana Mendelson initiated a project that makes historical documents from the Spanish Civil War-era more accessible to the public and scholars.

The exhibition focuses on the presence of artists in magazines, posters and works of artists during the Spanish Civil War. This exhibition is a first of its kind.

“Scholars did not pay attention to how these artists participated in other forms of visual communication,” Mendelson said. “No one had displayed visual artifacts as propaganda artifacts before.”

Contact to magazines and other examples of Spanish Civil War-era print culture has been limited due to existing copies of magazines, posters, photographs, pamphlets, postcards and hand-made items presently being out of circulation in private and public archives.

Mendelson said there are more than 300 Spanish Civil War posters, photographs and archival materials on display at the first phase of the project titled “Magazines and War, 1936-39,” on display until April 30 at Madrid’s Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia.

This is the first exhibit to highlight the function of artists, designers and photographers in Spain during the war, Mendelson said.

Mendelson said it is important to know how artists participate in everyday culture, understand artists and how they intervene in our everyday lives. What people saw during the war was influenced by artist participation.

The exhibition not only displays original print materials, it also includes interactive, bilingual kiosks that allow people who go see the exhibition the chance to explore hundreds of high-resolution pages of these materials. The kiosk features 30 fully digitized magazines from the period.

“It was really important to communicate the way in which magazines work, as multi-paged objects that people handle,” Mendelson said.

Carmen Ripolles, Mendelson’s graduate assistant, also made considerable contributions to her exhibition.

“I researched material for the catalog for the exhibition and for the Web site, (and) scanned material that is displayed on the Web site,” Ripolles said.

Mason Kessinger, of the collaborative Poccuo – a group that works with non-commercial media projects – helped design the Web site accompanying the exhibition.

“Professor Mendelson asked me to help her display the magazines online on a Web site in both Spanish and English,” Kessinger said.

“My hope is that in the future anyone who would be teaching a course on the Spanish Civil War would have access to the Web site to use as part of their teaching,” Mendelson said.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the war. There were many people who were alive during the war or children of those who were in the war who came to see the exhibit. There were many people from the ages of 16-24 that were very interested in the exhibition and used the bilingual interactive kiosks, Mendelson said.

“It is important for people in Spain to have access to this exhibit because to them it is still very much lived history,” Mendelson said. “It is an important political task of the exhibition itself, to make these artifacts visible.”