Commentary: U.S. Postal Service 2020 stamp program

Preview of U.S. Postal Service 2020 stamp program

The United States Postal Service recently offered the public a glimpse into its 2020 stamp program. The sample size is small, less than half of what the USPS will ultimately issue next year; but if it is any indication of what else is in store, collectors have got to be feeling let down and and at a loss to understand the program's rationale. If I were an American collector and 2019 happened to be the year I made my first steps into the hobby, 2020 would in all likelihood be the year I retired from it. The creative drought on the part of U.S. stamp designers is so severe that one of the sets headlining the 2020 program is "Fruits and Vegetables," which includes such stamps as lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, and eggplant.

Twenty years ago, when the U.S. Postal Service transitioned from moisture-activated stamps to self-adhesives, stamp collectors felt not only that the world around them was crumbling before their eyes but that they were being personally snubbed in the process. Their loyalty as postage stamp consumers was being disregarded by an ungrateful agency even as internet-based communication was starting to render snail mail, stamps and the postal service itself obsolete. Self-adhesive stamps had several key advantages over their lick-and-stick forebears, namely being more convenient, more hygienic, and cheaper to produce; however, the philatelic community was of the mind that these aspects were of secondary importance when factoring in how collector-unfriendly the new generation of stamps was. Long story short: Technological innovation and cost effectiveness triumphed over convention and conservatism, moisture-activated stamps were phased out of production, and collectors begrudgingly resigned themselves to the new reality.

Are stamp collectors and the U.S. Postal Service on another collision course? Considering the adversity stamp collectors have had to contend with in recent decades, one year of forgettable issues won't be what finally breaks their spirits. They will adapt. More pertinent than asking how the 2020 stamp program will affect existing collectors is asking whether the U.S. Postal Service isn't in fact deterring more potential newcomers to the hobby than it is attracting. The language of the USPS press release suggests that appealing to a wide audience is still one of the agency's guiding principles:

Since 1847, the Postal Service stamp program has celebrated the people, events and cultural milestones unique to the history of the United States. The 2020 stamp subjects continue this rich tradition. [...] "These miniature works of art offer something for everyone interested in American history and culture," said U.S. Postal Service Stamp Services Acting Executive Director William Gicker.

Somewhere between theory and practice, vision and execution, the USPS has drifted off course. Stamps of eggplant and lettuce will not win the U.S. Postal Service any new fans, and neither will four separate stamp issues devoted to horticulture and floristry.

Continuing the theme of conceptual and artistic laziness, the 2020 program also includes a stamp featuring "horizontal lines of red and pink hearts on a white background," another stamp featuring "an array of colorful circles arranged in a random pattern," and a four-stamp set featuring "the words 'Thank you' in cursive script and an elegant floral design that swirls through and around the words." Even the Earth Day stamp, which should inspire appreciation and concern for the environment, is "a playful painting of the planet, with small green lines surrounding Earth and hand-lettered text," that conveys nothing to the viewer.

Two of the stamps in the 2020 program are photographs of prominent Americans who died in 2016: journalist Gwen Ifill and golfer Arnold Palmer. Neither name was familiar to me prior to reading about them in the USPS press release, and it's unlikely I'd ever have heard of them were it not for their stamps. Being photographic images, it's understandable there wasn't a whole lot of room for artistic expression on the part of the stamps' designers, but surely they could have stylized the fonts to reflect Ifill's and Palmer's professions and thereby bestow some originality on the stamps. Again, the end result feels lazy and fails to incentivize the stamps' acquisition by anyone not already emotionally invested in the stamps' subject matter.

My criticism of the USPS 2020 stamp program has been harsh until now, but not all of its issues are equally unoriginal. A stamp commemorating two hundred years of Maine statehood that reproduces a 1914 painting by Edward Hopper of Maine's Ogunquit coast ranks a small step higher on the originality scale. According to the Portland Press Herald, Hopper "painted it looking down along a cove at Ogunquit at mid-tide, casting the rocks in the foreground in shadows and those further out in the light of a sunny day. The orange rockweed contrasts with the sharp blue of the sea."¹ The scene depicted feels desolate and one could argue that it is a poor choice for capturing Maine's spirit, but there will always be those to whom nature's emptiness speaks volumes and I credit the stamp designer for reviving a classic work of art.

2020 will mark one hundred years since the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted women the right to vote, and the USPS is celebrating the milestone with a commemorative stamp. Rather than highlight a specific individual or event associated with the women's suffrage movement, the "19th Amendment: Women Vote" stamp features "a stylized illustration of suffragists marching in a parade or other public demonstration." The generic design makes for a visually plain stamp, but it is straightforward in its message. More puzzling is the "Lunar New Year: Year of the Rat" stamp, which is the first stamp in a 12-stamp series that is projected to end in 2031. The stamp marks the third time the U.S. Postal Service is launching a Chinese zodiac series, after having done so in the years 1992-2004 and 2008-2019. But whereas the first two series clearly referenced the Chinese provenance of the tradition with Chinese logograms on the stamp, this series makes no mention of China either on the stamp proper or in the USPS press release. It is also puzzling because the U.S. hasn't paid homage to the calendars of other cultures, yet it is doing so to the Chinese calendar for the third time.

Sometimes a stamp -- any work of art, for that matter -- can be captivating not so much because of what we know about it but because of what we don't know and want to. Stamps that have this quality, this mystique, compel us to plumb their depths and fixate on their minutest details. The deeper we penetrate and the longer we fixate, the more secrets we discover and the stronger the image's gravitational pull on us. "Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor" may not be a perfect example of such an artwork, but it leans in that direction. Commemorating 400 years since the Pilgrim-bearing Mayflower set sail from England and arrived in North America, the stamp "depicts the Mayflower, with a shallop heading to shore, as the sun sets on the Pilgrims' arrival in Plymouth Harbor in 1620."² Greg Harlin, who painted the scene with the specific intent of it appearing on a postage stamp, is a household name in the context of contemporary artists whose creative focus is early American history. What I think makes this particular painting of his powerful is its asymmetry: the minuscule shallop is in the horizontal center of the scene while the towering Mayflower is off to the left and a vast unknown future awaits on the right (cf. "Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor" by William Halsall, 1882). We observe the solemnly unfolding drama with our breaths held, crouching behind some weeds, unseen and unheard, as the last rays of a blazing sun are about to give way to an uncertain night.

Finally, there are three stamp sets in the 2020 program towards which my feelings on the whole are positive. "Voices of the Harlem Renaissance" is a four-stamp set celebrating "one of the great artistic and literary movements in American history, the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, which firmly established African Americans as a vital force in literature and the arts." From top to bottom, the four figures appearing on the set are Nella Larsen, Arturo Alfonso, Anne Spencer, and Alain Locke. As in the case of Gwen Ifill and Arnold Palmer, these names were unfamiliar to me prior to reading about them; but unlike Ifill's and Palmer's stamps, the "Voices" set compelled me through its art to dig into the biographies of its subjects and learn about their legacies. Another four-stamp set is "Hip Hop," which features "photographs taken by Cade Martin that depict four elements of hip hop: MCing (rapping), b-boying (breakdancing), DJing and graffiti art." The age demographics of hip hop and stamp collecting are mutually inversive, i.e. the popularity of the former starts peaking as the popularity of the latter declines, and vice versa. From the perspective of market economics, that makes targeting hip hop listeners a high-risk maneuver. Abstracting away from the stamps themselves and from my opinion of them, the "Hip Hop" set represents the kind of approach the USPS needs to incorporate more aggressively into its business model: identify at what age collectors start losing interest in the hobby, and supply that age with products its appetite demands. Lastly, the five-stamp set "Enjoy the Great Outdoors" depicts "five different scenes of outdoor activities -- building a sand castle, hiking, cross-country skiing, canoeing and biking." As a runner, there's a part of me that's disappointed trail running didn't make it onto the set, but that same disappointment is an ipso-facto acknowledgement of my appreciation of the set's artistic quality and regret that my fellow trail runners are missing out on what would have otherwise been an instant smash hit.

Reviewing stamps is an exercise in subjectivity. What I consider lame could be another collector's objet-d'amour. Stamp programs are by their nature mixed bags, as indeed they try to be in order to broaden their contents' appeal. It seems to me, however, especially when compared to the philatelic output of other countries, that the American stamp program is exceedingly derivative -- as though the USPS lacked the resources to develop new ideas and to effectively communicate them to talented artists. If I were alone in bemoaning the stamp design choices of the USPS, it would be one thing. The internet, however, is replete with scathing reactions to year after year of American stamp programs. Here, for example is what author and collector Richard Lehmann (StampFinder.com, Forbes) had to say back in 2016:

I have several suggestions for themes that would be popular -- American whiskey and a series on U.S. marathons, to name two. Instead, I fear it's more likely that what we'll find in subsequent stamp programs are series featuring doorknobs and shower curtains.