Cal U to showcase cereal box exhibit
CALIFORNIA – California University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Art and Design will host a unique art exhibit from Nov. 10 through Dec. 7 at the University’s Gallery of Fine Art, located on the third floor of Manderino Library. The Cal U community and general public are invited to view the collection cereal boxes and prizes of Ross Lloyd, native Southwestern Pennsylvania collector. The exhibit is titled “The American Cereal Box: Designs for Kids from 1960s-1990s.”
An opening reception will take place on Thursday, Nov. 10, at the Gallery of Fine Art from 4 to 6 p.m. There is no admission charge for the reception or viewing of the exhibit. For more information contact Dr. R. Scott Lloyd at 724-938-4565 or e-mail Lloyd@cup.edu.
Gallery hours are 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturdays and 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Sundays. The gallery is closed on Fridays.
Lloyd’s collection is among the top collections of cereal boxes in the country and is the largest exhibition shown in the Gallery of Fine Art to date. It has taken Lloyd more than four years to assemble this group of more than 100 boxes, box flats, cereal prizes, in-package prizes, period magazine advertising and CD advertising and DVD cereal commercials, actual animation cells from the cereal commercials and other cereal-related design collectibles.
Some sets of boxes on exhibit will follow decades of design evolution. A collection this deep requires that Lloyd devote a part of every day to collecting.
Lloyd concedes that this area of collecting can appear a bit eccentric at first glance. However, Lloyd can quickly convince anyone of the too-often under-appreciated value in design history that this collection holds. Many of the designers of cereal boxes were also famous for other areas of art and design such cartoonists Jay Ward and Tony Jaffe.
The first in-product mass-produced hologram in the world was made by McDonald Douglas Corporation for “King Vitamin” cereal.
Many other forms of creative visual, optical and perceptual content found their way on or inside cereal boxes. But beyond the design-world attraction is a more personal connection to collecting cereal boxes that anyone can appreciate.
“These boxes show the art that was on every American kid’s breakfast table growing up in the post World War II world,” Lloyd said. “We read the boxes while eating cereal every morning. We completed the mazes, found the hidden animals, looked through special glasses from inside the box to discover secret codes on the back of the box. And then the great prizes: secret decoder rings, a submarine operated by baking soda that dived and surfaced in the sink, or a plastic wind pipe that made plastic ball hover in the air when you blew through the pipe.
“A lot of the prizes were not that well made but for some strange reason we loved them,” he added. “Those were the prizes just like the ones sold in the Christmas stockings from the five-and-dime stores that your parents never let Santa get you. So, really, this collection is probably even more about reconnecting with your childhood through art.”
This exhibition is made possible by the continued support from Douglas Hoover, interim dean, library services and the staff of the Manderino Library, and through sponsorship by the Cal U Student Activities Board (SAI), Cal U Associated Artists, Cal U’s College of Liberal Arts and the Department of Art and Design at California University of Pennsylvania.