Wyoming Humanities Network

Those of you who have had occasion to visit the Wyoming Humanities Council offices in Laramie have probably noticed that we have the good fortune to host traveling exhibits, especially ones that we’ve helped to fund. Right now, for instance, every time we come to work, we get to look at photographs by Sara Wiles from her exhibit Ni’iihi’: In a Good Way, Photographs of Wind River Arapaho. (Don’t go getting overwhelmed with jealousy, now. Our offices are open to the public, and you can come see them, too.)

All this to say: at our staff meeting yesterday, when the question arose what we should display after the Buffalo Bill Historical Center calls back their lovely Sara Wiles exhibit this summer, I secretly wished we had access to an exhibit of vintage print ads. This is not just another manifestation of my obsession with early sixties London mod fashion and mid-century modern design. Not entirely. There are so, so many reasons to love vintage ads.

First off — and this is important, and must not be overlooked — it is impossible not to have fun looking through vintage ads. We Americans know our advertising conventions, whether we’re conscious of it or not. Even children. Those conventions seem so much more blatant in an advertisement from 1920 or 1950 that we can’t help but giggle. Fun is good…

…especially since countless teachers and scholars have found that vintage ads provide a handy way to find purchase on some slippery questions. Feminist scholars and artists figured this out right quick, witness Jean Kilbourne’s seminal Killing Us Softly films, which was among the first to “take advertising seriously,” as she put it, in analyzing how women are viewed by society at large. The fact that the field of consumer psychology exists at all is itself pretty telling. If the questions of what beauty is and whether it matters are still fit subjects for philosophical speculation (and Elaine Scarry would certainly argue that they are), then thinking people ignore advertising at their peril, since it both reflects and shapes ideas of what is beautiful: people, objects, design. And what about the furor over negative political ads when each election season rolls around? That phenomenon is hardly new.

When I taught composition, one of my favorite assignments involved directing students to Duke University’s Ad*Access archive, where they had to choose an ad, at least 30 years old, and use it to think about rhetoric’s usual questions of audience, evidence, pathos, and so on. (Is this ad for Thorazine, I might ask, aimed at “agitated” seniors themselves?)  Students then had to choose an analogous ad from a contemporary magazine and do the same thing. My hope, of course, was that in articulating the rhetoric of ads distanced from them by time would give the students the language and methodology they needed to do the same thing with the ads trying to persuade them, right now. Sometimes it worked.

At colleges and universities, at libraries and museums, and here at the Wyoming Humanities Council, we are all dedicated to cultivating an educated and thoughtful citizenry. Vintage ads — whether we encounter them in a classroom, on a museum visit, or online — are a wonderfully effective and entertaining way to accomplish just that.

Speaking of vintage ads online, any search will bring up hundreds, but here are a few of my favorite spots to find them:

Print ads:

Ad*Access: High quality images, scholarly site

WellMedicated: Design blog

Found in Mom’s Basement: Vintage advertising blog

adflip: Bills itself as “The world’s largest archive of classic print ads.” Membership required to take full advantage of the site, but you can still find some interesting things as a guest.

Weirdomatic: Blog that collects and publishes “weird” images. This post, “Old Creepy Ads,” reignited my interest in vintage ads!

Video ads:

Adland: Great big marketing blog! Mostly recent ads, though this link will take you to their collection of Superbowl commercials, starting with 1969.

CNN’s All Politics: Archive of political ads dating from 1952.

University of Wisconsin Advertising Project: Not the most clever name, but these political ads are fascinating!

The Living Room Candidate: The Museum of the Moving Image created this site, the most comprehensive database of political television ads I’ve found. I was hooked after the first video I clicked on, the animated “Ike for President.”

Happy thinking, and have fun!