While historic material relating to living on wheels forms the heart of our collection, we see that focus less as confining bookends and more as a solid embarkation point for continuing adventures in hunting and gathering. We often acquire material that helps define an era or a design style, and very often that continues along the themes of transportation and architecture, though not always.

One oddly connected, era-defining collection we acquired was nearly 14,000 large format negatives, circa 1940-1970, from a commercial photographer here in Philadelphia who was about to retire. His old studio was fascinating, with a giant camera on narrow gauge railroad tracks and one large room that was the inside of another camera. We bought flat files and light tables and gew gaws and jim cracks… and lots and lots of negs.

After gathering dust on shelves out of sight, way in the back of Lost Highways, a determined intern went through them and separated them into categories. Lots of product images, portraits of politicians and corporate bigwigs, a little burlesque, a little science, and odd categories like WWII ordnance displays. Out of the daunting morass, there appeared 25 negatives shot from the portfolio of a futuristic illustrator who signed his name RADEBAUGH.

We recognized one of the images right away as the cover of a magazine in our collection. A little digging and rooting and we found it on the 1956 annual issue of MoToR Magazine. Word went out to friends in the area, and a bunch of us came together to eyeball the cache (and to share a mitre of snog). When whoops and hollers erupted as each image was laid out on the light table, we knew we had a hit.

All agreed it would be sad to rebury such fun imagery, so the decision was made to use the 25 negs as the foundation for a broader RADEBAUGH exhibit. The two previous exhibits, RV ROOTS, The Auto Camping Craze Of The Teens and Twenties, and THE FAMILY CAR ON MARS, American Station Wagon Design 1956-1962 came down at the beginning of December, and we set RADEBAUGH to open in March.