2018 marked the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. This exhibition explores the important role tobacco played in the war, both in the battlefield trenches and on the home front. The seeds were also planted for a pandemic of smoking-caused diseases.

How New York City became the Heart of the Tobacco Industry…and Anti-Smoking activism.

As with lung cancer and emphysema, the dramatic rise in heart disease in the US paralleled the rise in cigarette smoking. Yet despite the early published evidence of the link between smoking and heart disease, the American Medical Association (AMA) and other health groups were reluctant to urge the public to give up their cigarettes….

Corporate sponsorship of the arts was pioneered by Philip Morris as a means of diverting attention from the medical evidence of cigarette smoking’s devastating death toll…