From Their Perspective IV: Commentaries on Modern Advertising Postcards

As the Curator of LMU Postcard Collections, Rachel Wen-Paloutzian led the student curation of the 2016 A&SC summer exhibition, From Their Perspective IV: Commentaries on Modern Advertising Postcards . Curated by 17 student assistants from eight library departments at LMU, this summer exhibition showcases our latest postcards acquisition, a donation of advertising postcards that are known as rack cards or freecards from the 1990s to early 2000s. These advertising postcards were produced for marketing campaigns to attract the public and to promote commodities, organizations, or services. They were often placed on racks in social venues, free for anyone to take. For this exhibition, student curators selected advertising postcards of their own interests from a wide range of topics, such as apparel, entertainment, technology, and social issues. Imagining they were the consumers, student curators made observations and comments on the personal, social, and visual aspects of the advertising postcards.