ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 28, 1996 TAG: 9604270009
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO
SOURCE: JULIA ANGWIN SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Poor Buster Brown. He survived two world wars only to find himself homeless in San Francisco.
But the 4-foot-high statue of a shoe salesman, created in 1911, has plenty of company. He is part of a collection of 5,000 advertising characters that has been on the streets since the 1989 earthquake destroyed its former home.
Now the Museum of Modern Mythology is trying to reopen in a new location. It has hired a new administrator and moved its collection out of storage into the offices of its founder.
Several cities, including Richmond, Va., and and St. Paul, Minn., have expressed interest in the museum. St. Paul even offered subsidized rent as well as federal, state and city grants. But the museum staff is hoping to keep the gallery in the San Francisco area.
That's because California advertising executives also would like the museum to stay in town to validate the importance of their profession.
``The reopening of the museum would be a positive statement for the creative force that advertising represents in San Francisco,'' said Fred Goldberg, president and CEO of San Francisco ad firm Goldberg Moser O'Neill.
The only museum of its kind is looking for space to house advertising critters ranging from a 7-foot seal named Harbie that decorated a Southern California gas station to a collection of Aunt Jemima dolls.
``We all grew up with Tony the Tiger and all these things that in some way shaped who we are,'' said Jim Morton, author of an upcoming book on advertising characters.
San Francisco florist Stanlee Gatti is hoping to raise money for a combination advertising outdoor park and indoor museum somewhere South of Market.
``I'm working somewhat surreptitiously with some corporations to help underwrite it and to form an organization hand in hand with the Museum of Modern Mythology,'' said Gatti, who is also president of the San Francisco Arts Commission but is working on the museum outside that role.
He hopes the park will display his private collection of advertising, which includes the giant blue and orange Union 76 sign that was recently removed from a building in downtown San Francisco.
The museum is also working to rebuild interest and collect donations.
``In some ways we're starting from scratch,'' said museum director Ellen Weis. ``But we hope to build very professionally on all the momentum the museum had built.''
Before the quake, the museum had just doubled in size and had finally started garnering large corporate grants.
Basically, it was a museum ahead of its time.
``It wasn't fine art and nobody understood it was art,'' Weis said.
The museum aimed to illuminate the little-known connection between popular icons such as the Mobil flying horse and mythical characters such as Pegasus, a winged horse in Greek mythology.
``If you look at (the characters) carefully, they have a real edgy quality,'' said Dean MacCannell, a professor at University of California at Davis and museum board member. ``These characters can get away with stuff that other so-called humans cannot.''
The dancing raisins, he said, ``are a scandalous play on racial matters. They are doing black face in a way that was feasible in the minstrel era but is no longer really feasible today.'' The Pillsbury doughboy popping out of his can symbolizes emerging from the womb, Weis said. ``It's very primal,'' she added.
Such connections highlight the museum's devotion to the principles espoused by scholar Joseph Campbell, who popularized the idea that historical myths are relevant to modern life.
The museum was founded in 1982 by three Campbell devotees: Weis and her two friends Matthew Cohen and Jeff Errick.
Errick collected ad characters and owned many of the museum's most famous pieces, such as an 8-foot plastic Jolly Green Giant and a rotating mechanized bear advertising Hamm's beer. Cohen was an artist who studies semiotics, or the cultural meaning of signs and symbols. Weis was a writer.
The three friends began the museum in a corner of their home-warehouse. Eventually, it became a formal museum and moved to a commercial building.
``People visiting the museum expressed a tremendous sense of pleasure and warmth at seeing these characters, like encountering an old friend from childhood,'' said Trudy Kehret Ward, a marketing professor at the University of California Berkeley.
``My first reaction when I saw the collection was that it was like seeing American popular culture on fast forward,'' said MacCannell, the professor and board member.
But the museum closed its doors the day after the Loma Prieta earthquake, which severely damaged the building where the museum was located. And the cash-strapped organization couldn't afford to move.
So they sadly boxed up the artifacts and found new jobs.
It was another tragedy that pulled the museum from its grave. When museum founder Cohen died two years ago from cancer at age 41, Weis started getting condolence calls mixed with inquiries about the museum.
``That was kind of the kick in the pants that made me realize things needed to get going,'' Weis said.
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