Conference in focus

Museum Exhibit

The MSU Museum, in cooperation with the School of Packaging, is developing an exhibition entitled "The Age Packaging," which will be on display from Feb. 24 through Oct. 27, 2002. It will be featured during WORLDPAK 2002 week.

"The Age of Packaging"
Main Floor Gallery - MSU Museum
Feb. 24 - Oct. 27, 2002

Barrels, bottles, bags, baskets, boxes - we take many of these items for granted today as everyday functional or decorative objects. In earlier times, they represented innovation and necessity, created for storage and transport of precious liquids, spices, or seeds.

"The Age of Packaging," which opens at the MSU Museum in February, investigates the advancements in packaging worldwide from ancient times to the 19th and 20th centuries in the United States. The exhibit is being produced in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the School of Packaging at Michigan State University in 2002. The school was the first academic program in the nation to undertake the study of packaging.

Highlights include examples from the Old World; Chinese and pre-Columbian pottery vessels; Roman glass bottles; and Chinese and Japanese boxes and gourd containers. The exhibition, much of it taken from the MSU Museum's vast collections, concentrates principally on the history of American packaging.

Products in the exhibit illustrate the evolution of manufacturing techniques and advancements in freshness seals, security and stability, and economy in the production process. Over time, mouth-blown glass bottles were replaced by machine-made glass containers, wooden crates bowed to cardboard boxes, and plastics began to replace tin, glass and paper. Unusual items include MAC and MSU milk bottles, boned corset and dress trimmings in their original packaging; and decorative printed feed sacks, a couple of which have been turned into garments.

The exhibit also presents solutions to particularly tricky packaging problems, features advancements in advertising and merchandising, and illustrates the introduction of graphics, color, design, and slogans that make products "jump off" store shelves.

Complementing this special exhibit is the MSU Museum's long-standing Stanley's Crossroads Store in Heritage Hall, a recreation of a general store of the early 1900s with everything from groceries, dry goods, and household supplies to a post office. The general store is used for School of Packaging assignments in which students compare product packaging of yesteryear with that of today.

"The Age of Packaging" is supported by the Coca-Cola Co. and the Kellogg Co., to whom we give special thanks.

Some of the old, rare, novel, nostalgic objects featured in "The Age of Packaging" include:

Amphora
Bamboo containers
Bread wrappers from Lansing bakeries
Early plastics, including Bakelite bottle caps
Egyptian stone containers
Hat boxes
Lithographed trading cards
MAC and MSU Dairy containers, including glass milk and cream bottles, milk bottles and paperboard bottle caps
Native American pottery
Patent medicine in glass, paperboard, tin, and ceramic containers
Patent model of a bushel basket
Radio and TV tube boxes
Rawhide boxes
Spice and tea tins
Stoneware crocks
Tinkertoy cans and metal Erector set box
Voight Flour Mills flour sacks from Grand Rapids, Michigan
Woven plant fiber bags