2019 Fall Conference
Hagley Library, 298 Buck Road, Wilmington, DE
The 2019 fall conference will convene an international group of scholars concerned with the power of pictures in the world of commerce. As pictures became a central feature of the advertising message in the second half of the nineteenth century, they migrated from the pages of newspapers and magazines, and the posters on the sides of buildings, to such technologies as electrical spectaculars, film, and later, television. At the heart of this diffusion was an effort to make the pictorial sales message migrate not only across media but also into the minds of consumers.
Conference panels will take place throughout the day on Friday, November 8 in the Soda House.
This conference is part of a two-year initiative on commercial pictures and the art of visual persuasion organized by Jennifer Greenhill (Associate Professor of Art History, USC), Vanessa Schwartz (Professor of Art History and History and Director of the Visual Studies Research Institute, USC), and Alex Taylor (Assistant Professor and Academic Curator, University of Pittsburgh). Roger Horowitz, Director of Hagley’s Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society, will join the program committee of this conference. This initiative includes the Hagley conference in November 2019; a team-taught interdisciplinary graduate seminar at the University of Southern California, Spring 2020; a second conference at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, in September 2020; and a volume of essays.
For a listing of past Hagley conferences, click here.
Banner image: Ladies Home Journal (1921), Hagley Digital Archives.
Conference Details
PDF Schedule
Nov. 8, 2019
8:30: coffee, light breakfast at Hagley
9:00 - 9:15: Welcome to conference
9:15 - 11:00: Panel 1. Graphic systems
Jennifer M. Black, Misericordia University
“The Genius of Pictorial Advertising”: Images and Consumer-Centered Advertising in the US, 1830-1900
Michael J. Golec, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Utility, Luxury, and Projection: Affect and Cognition in T. M. Cleland's Advertising Illustration
Paul S. Moore, Ryerson University
Drawing its Own “Maplan”: Hanff-Metzger Inc.'s Lost Blueprints of the Art of Persuasion, 1914-1937
Respondent: Jennifer Greenhill, University of Southern California
11:00 - 11:30 break, coffee and snacks
11:30 - 1:15: Panel 2. Multisensorial technics
Britt Salvesen, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Selling Sight: Advertising the Third Dimension
Wendy A. Woloson, Rutgers University-Camden
Selling Lightning Sausages, Chair Seat Squawkers, Goo Goo Teeth, and Other Weird Stuff to American Consumers in the Industrial Age
Ai Hisano, Kyoto University
Creating a Visual Fantasy: Sensory Appeal and the Presentation of Naturalness in Food Photography in the Interwar United States
Respondent: Erin Pauwels, Temple University
1:15 - 2:15 lunch
2:15 - 4:15: Panel 3. Commercial environments off the page
Anca I. Lasc, Pratt Institute
The Power of Windows: Artistic Interventions in the Commercial World
Anat Rosenberg, Radzyner Law School
Ways of Seeing Advertising: A Cultural Legal History of the Hoarding, Britain c. 1860-1914
Martin L. Johnson, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Farming with Dynamite: Using Motion Pictures as Spectacle, Evidence, and Means of Persuasion (1895-1930)
Richard K. Popp, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Picturing a Knowledge Economy: The Time-Life Exhibition Center and 1960s Corporate Modernism
Respondent: Jason Hill, University of Delaware
4:15 - 4:30: break
4:30 - 6:15: Panel 4. Disruptive performances
Ryan Linkof, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art
The Arrow Man and the Quarterback: Marketing Male Desire in the Commercial Pictures of J. C. Leyendecker
Astrid Van den Bossche, University of London
Dreamatic Undergarments: Examining the material responses to the Maidenform Dreams campaign (Us, 1949-1969)
Rose Bishop, Richard Avedon Foundation
Avedon's Creature: Parody, Performance, and Commerce in The Fabulous Fifties
Respondent: Alex Taylor, University of Pittsburgh
6:15 - 7:00: Closing summary
Vanessa Ruth Schwartz, University of Southern California
7:00 - 7:30: Reception
Advanced registration required. Registration is free. Lunch on site can be purchased in advance for $15.00. To register, please contact Carol Lockman at (302) 658-2400, ext. 243, or clockman@hagley.org.
The conference will be held in the Soda House Auditorium. Use Hagley’s Buck Road entrance off Route 100 in Wilmington, Delaware. GPS: 298 Buck Road East, Wilmington, Delaware 19807. Additional directions are available at www.hagley.org/directions.
For those staying overnight, we recommend the Best Western Brandywine Valley Inn. There is a block of rooms available for attendees and shuttle service during the conference is provided. Call (800) 537-7772 for reservations and indicate that you are attending Hagley’s fall conference to receive the discounted rate.