Skip to main content

About the Exhibit

An American Abroad: Postcards from 1908-1909, features postcards collected by the Kinnear family while traveling during the 'Golden Era of Postcards' (1895-1915), the most popular period of postcard production. These artifacts operate like Facebook, text messaging, and Twitter all wrapped in one, yet unlike social media platforms, postcards are also produced to be collected. This particular selection and era show trends within modern history of the formation of identity, mass tourism, industrialization, and mass communication. Most importantly, postcards are objects of material culture, acting as visual references of what people value most at the time.

On recto, a photographic postcard of Gertrude H. Kinnear, first owner of the collection in 1908.

This exhibit compiles only but a small number of postcards from an assemblage of over 600 postcards collected by 4 generations of women, and spans over 100 years. Beginning in 2014, I started the process of cataloguing the expansive collection, which my grandmother, Elizabeth Mealy had originally started notating years before. After she passed away, I wanted to create a space of collective memory that compiles family history and research, and an analysis of distinct, and highly valuable postcards. I hope that other's will feel empowered to do the same.