See a treasure-trove of historical artifacts that chronicle the evolution of the public relations public relations industry when the Museum of Public Relations and the Communicators Team at the National Press Club host the first-ever virtual tour of the museum on Dec. 9 at 12 p.m.
As a holiday gift to the professional communicators and journalists, the Museum of PR and the National Press Club are offering the online tour for free. However, advanced registration is required.
Founded in 1997 in New York, the museum is the only one of its kind in the world that is dedicated to the field of public relations. It was founded with a donation of papers and other materials from the estate of Edward Bernays, the “father of public relations” who was a friend of the museum’s founders and curators, Shelly and Barry Spector.
Today, the museum displays exhibits of work by Bernays and other industry trailblazers, including Joseph Varney Baker, who started the nation’s first Black-owned public relations agency, and Ivy Lee, the inventor of the press release.
The museum also maintains a reference and research library, hosts educational events and webinars, and issues publications about the industry, making it the largest resource of information about the public relations – and boasts some 2,500 photos, documents, books, newspapers and communications devices.
Please make plans to participate in this unique look at the history of public relations and how the museum is helping to shape the industry’s future and inform the public of its social value.
The virtual tour will include a look at these artifacts from the museum:
- The banana stapler United Fruit gave to Bernays.
- Ivy Lee's unpublished manuscript from 1928 (straight from his typewriter).
- A lightbulb used as a souvenir to commemorate Edison's 1879 invention of the lightbulb, during Henry Ford's 1929 Light's Golden Jubilee.
- The original Disney press kit for the 1948 release of the first Dumbo movie.
- Hand-written correspondence from Harold Burson's Army days in which he talks about his dreams of forming a PR agency that could merge with an ad agency.
- A 1906 typewriter, 1904 candlestick phone and 1900 stereoscope used to give viewers a 3D perspective on current events, travel destinations and even "bathing beauties of Coney Island."
Speaker
Shelley Spector
President, Spector & Associates, 1991; Founder, The Museum of Public Relations, 1997; Adjunct professor of Public Relations History at Baruch College in the M.A. Corporate Communications program; formerly adjunct professor in the PR/CC M.S. program at NYU. Elected to Arthur W. Page Society in 1997. Winner of nearly 40 PR awards on behalf of Fortune 100 companies: e.g., AT&T, Bayer Corporation and Philips Corporation; named “Creative All Star” and “Most Innovative Agency” by the Holmes Report.