There aren’t many places nowadays where you’ll find FDR, Stalin and Hitler all in the same room. One such place, however, is at “Revolutionary Tides: The Art of the Political Poster, 1914-1989,” the current featured exhibit at the Cantor Arts Center.

Spanning such historical milestones as the New Deal and China’s Cultural Revolution, the exhibition is one of three major branches of the 2000 Crowds Project spearheaded by Jeffrey T. Schnapp, director of the Stanford Humanities Lab.

Schnapp, who also serves as chief curator of the Cantor exhibition, describes 2000 Crowds as a “truly ambitious, large-scale project looking at crowds and the modern era.”

In addition to the exhibition, the project includes a Web site — http://crowds.stanford.edu — and a Stanford University Press Book, forthcoming in 2006.

The Cantor Arts exhibition features works by well-known graphic artists such as John Heartfield, Gustav Klutsis and Xanti Schawinsky. It also displays pieces by Norman Rockwell and Andy Warhol.

According to Schnapp, “Revolutionary Tides” focuses on themes that stretch beyond their historical and political contexts — namely, the “human multitude as the actors of modern life” and the derision of political power from the populace.

Schnapp notes that though “the curatorial choices are deliberately very heterogeneous [in that they] encompass artists from some 30 countries,” the works’ juxtaposition demonstrates “the emergence of a common language between these graphics” communicating “the idea that political power emanates from the people.”

Schnapp says he considers this “common language” to be unique to the 20th century.

“While there are parts of this graphic vernacular that have deep roots in history, this language is largely a new language that tries to translate very abstract notions into concrete terms,” he explains. “These are the kinds of challenges that all these artists faced.”

“The show is really a show about visual language — not so much about political consequences or political movements,” he continues.

The posters’ so-called common language is evident in the museum’s layout. Instead of being organized chronologically or by political ideology, the exhibition’s works are separated into three categories — “figures,” which examines the visual graphics of the posters; “Numbers,” which looks at the statistics of its mass production and distribution; and “Symbols,” which examines the connection among the posters’ iconic leaders and symbols and the actual masses they represented.

The posters were chosen from 40,000 to 45,000 others that belong to the Hoover Institution. Schnapp sifted through them with the help of colleagues and graduate and undergraduate researchers.

The presentation of posters at Cantor is based largely upon their original context.

“Many of these posters were produced in [quantities] of 50,000 to 100,000 and weren’t meant to be [displayed] in a salon,” Schnapp says.

He adds that the exhibit’s setting accordingly includes “visual and acoustical forms of business that would be true of a modern industrial metropolis,” in which the posters were meant to be placed.

The original viewers of the propaganda “were interested in anything but looking at an artwork,” Schnapp explains. “Posters were supposed to communicate under pressure.”

Around 25 undergraduate and graduate students contributed to the Crowds Project, specifically through research, writing captions for the exhibition’s art works and devising hypotheses on layout and installation.

Among them was Jason Glick, who took Schnapp’s “Crowds” class during winter quarter of 2003 and graduated in 2005 with a bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities.

Glick says he conducted research for both the Web site and the exhibition, which often involved “unpacking the meaning of a poster” by figuring out the date and place of its original distribution.

“I wish a lot more of my academic work [had been] like that,” Glick says, referring to the investigation and interpretive decision-making the research required.

Like Schnapp, Glick says he was also struck by the posters’ similar uses of propaganda, despite their affiliations with different regimes.

“There are enough commonalities that it’s clear that propaganda is something that’s not from just one political style,” Glick says. “The posters are kind of outlandish in how dramatic the messages are. It’s not only in the Soviet Union and in Nazi Germany, but [also] in the U.S. during the New Deal.”

Glick also notes that this historical retrospective of propaganda still holds current relevance.

“It’s a really timely exhibit in that the force of the propaganda message in some of the posters is very overwhelming,” he says. “Political messages resonate right now in our politically charged climate.”

“Revolutionary Tides” is on exhibit at the Cantor Arts Center until Jan. 1, 2006. It will then move to the Wolfsonian-FIU in Miami Beach, where it will run from Feb. 24 to June 25, 2006.

The Cantor Arts Center is open Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Thursday 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.