Bibliophiles Beware: The Situationist International and the Art & Politics of Cultural Hijacking
Active between 1957 and 1972, The Situationist International (S.I.) was a revolutionary alliance of artists, intellectuals, architects and political theorists that is hailed as the “last avant-garde” of the 20th century. One of the organization’s core concepts is that of détournement, which can be understood as the subversion of established cultural commodities as a means […]
Paul Elder: A Literary Life in Seven Bookstores
Paul Elder’s bookstores were a familiar sight in downtown San Francisco for seventy years, but he preferred to call himself a “Western Publisher.” He issued over four hundred titles in his career, beginning in 1898 in partnership with Morgan Shepard, then from 1903 as Paul Elder & Company. In this exhibition, we present many of […]
Creatures of Commerce: Animal Advertising Ephemera from the Bruce Shyer Collection
Humans have been fascinated by animal imagery since the prehistoric era when cavemen painted images of animals on walls to symbolically capture their prey and to record their observations. With the advent of the printing press, animal imagery was used as a symbol for the press itself. For example, the great fifteenth century printer Aldus […]