Saul Steinberg designed this poster for Guild Hall in East Hampton, New York, a cultural institution founded there in 1931 and combining a theater, an art gallery, and a meeting place as well as an art collection focused on the work of artists (like Steinberg) who have lived and worked in Eastern Long Island. The poster is also known as Admiral Perry Speaking English to the Japanese in reference to the figure on the left, intended to be the American naval officer Commodore Matthew Perry whose official mission to Japan in 1853 opened the country to Western trade and influence. Steinberg’s design, like many of his works during this period, is based on cut kraft paper; the various handwritten phrases representing the speech of the American and the almost semaphoric range of marks and signs signifying the response of his Japanese interlocuters point to the lack of common understanding between them.