[nggallery id=22 template=galleryview] Bornin Brooklyn in 1917, Alex Steinweiss invented the album cover as we know it, and created a new graphic art form. In 1940, as Columbia Records’ young new art director, he pitched an idea, to replace the standard plain brown wrapper with an eye-catching illustration? His covers for Columbia—combining bold typography with modern, elegant illustrations—took the industry by storm and revolutionized the way records were sold.Over three decades, Steinweiss made thousands of original artworks for classical, jazz, and popular record covers, as well as logos, labels, adverting material, even his own typeface, the Steinweiss Scrawl. He launched the golden age of album cover design and influenced generations of designers to follow. Less well known—but included in the exhibition—are his posters for the U.S. Navy; packaging and label design for liquor companies; film title sequences; as well as his fine art. This retrospective exhibition compiles his most important pieces giving us the chance to understand the work of a man who converted ideas into images as nobody else has ever done