Earlier this month, the
American Antiquarian Society (AAS) held
a conference with the title, "Before Madison Avenue: Advertising in Early America." Now the
Library Company of Philadelphia, in conjunction with the LCP's
Visual Culture Program and the AAS's
Center for Historic Visual Culture (CHAViC), has announced a similar meeting, also called "Before Madison Avenue: Advertising in Early America," to be held March 15-16, 2012. The conference
program is now available. As the organizers explain:
From newspaper agate print to trade cards to broadsides to posters, ads were everywhere in early America, helping to support the rise of entire sectors of the publishing industry and introducing Americans to the ever-expanding world of goods and services that the growing nation offered. But what were the aesthetics, conventions, norms, and business practices of advertising in early America? How did individuals and businesses make sense of the constantly changing media that were available to them, and how did early American consumers respond to printed, spoken, or illustrated inducements to buy? How did what is now both an established business practice and an omnipresent cultural form
take shape? Speakers at this conference will present new research on advertising in North America before the rise of the modern advertising agency (late 1870s).
Those interested in attending should visit the
conference website for additional information and an on-line registration form.
