JAMES BARKLEY. "Birth Control." Illustration for the NBC educational brochure The Population Problem as Explored by The Five NBC Television Stations, circa 1980. Watercolor, acrylic wash and pencil on board. 483x406 mm; 19x16 1/4 inches, on 22 1/2x20-inch board. Signed lower right margin, beneath artwork. Taped to matte along verso. A copy of the booklet accompanies the artwork.
NBC published this brochure, illustrated with seven of Barkley's illustrations, to highlight a series of special programs by their five main stations devoted to the topic of population, particularly as it affected the metropolitan areas they served. This image, included in The Society of Illustrators' Annual Exhibition, Advertising category, for that year, accompanied the essay about WMAQ-TV Chicago's special "Less Than an Ounce of Prevention." It explored the Pill's effect on women's liberation, outlined the religious, political, and medical objections to it, and interviewed the doctors who invented it.
