James (Jim) McMullan Papers

James McMullan was born in June 1934 in Tsingtao, North China. His grandparents had immigrated to China from Ireland in the 1880's as missionaries for the Anglican Church, eventually establishing an orphanage and the export company James McMullan Ltd. McMullan himself lived in Cheefoo, where the McMullan company had its headquarters, until 1941, when he and his mother left for Canada while his father joined the British Army. In 1945, a month after the end of the war, James's father was killed in a plane crash while flying to a prisoner of war camp to make arrangements for the internees to return home.

When McMullan was 17, he and his mother immigrated to the United States. He studied for a year at the Cornish School of Allied Arts in Seattle. At 19, he volunteered for the United States Army, serving at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where he illustrated diagrams of where to position propaganda loudspeakers on Sherman tanks. After his service, McMullan moved to New York City in 1955 and continued his art education at Pratt Institute. During his time at Pratt, he supported himself illustrating book jackets and provided magazine illustrations for titles including Esquire and Sport Illustrated.

In 1966, McMullan joined Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast at Push Pin Studios. Eventually in 1969 McMullan left Push Pin just as Milton Glaser and Clay Felker were starting New York Magazine; McMullan thus became part of the core group of artists that contributed to that magazine's singular graphic personality. In 1976, McMullan completed his first Broadway poster for the play Comedians. McMullan went on to meet Bernard Gersten, the Executive Producer of Lincoln Center Theater who eventually hired him to create theatrical posters for that institution. McMullan has created more than fifty posters for Lincoln Center Theater, including for shows such as Anything Goes, Carousel,Ah! Wilderness, A Delicate Balance, and South Pacific.

In 1979 Jim McMullan married Kate Hall, a children book writer from St. Louis. A year later, their daughter was born. His first book published with his wife, titled The Noisy Giant's Tea Party, was inspired by their experience with their daughter and was published in 1992.