Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School is pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibition “The High Art of Photographic Advertising: The 1934 National Alliance of Art and Industry Exhibition”. The exhibit will run through October 9, 2010 in the North Lobby, Baker Library | Bloomberg Center.
In 1934, a stunning photographic exhibition sponsored by the National Alliance of Art and Industry (NAAI) and the Photographic Illustrators, Inc. opened at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York. The show featured works by the top photographers of the day- including Russell Aikins, Margaret Bourke-White, Nickolas Muray, John Paul Pennebaker, and William Rittase – with a particular emphasis on advertising and industrial images. A year later the NAAI donated over 100 prints from the exhibition to the Harvard Business School, which at the time was actively collecting photographs for exhibition and classroom use.
“The High Art of Photographic Advertising,” organized by Baker Library Historical Collections, revisits the original 1934 exhibition, exploring the synergy between photography and corporate culture of the time and how 75 years later, the collection survives as a telling chapter in evolving perceptions about photography’s artistic,
commercial, and cultural significance.
Visit the accompanying website here.