From Concept to Product: Meroë Morse and Polaroid’s Culture of Art and Innovation, 1945–1969
Exhibition Location
North Lobby
Baker Library | Bloomberg Center
Harvard Business School
Soldiers Field, Boston, MA 02163
Open to the public during Main Desk Hours
Edwin Land with Polaroid Land Camera, 1947. Polaroid Corporation Records, Photograph & Visual Materials Collection, b. X.650, f. 1.
EXHIBITION WEBSITE COMING SOON
The universal appeal of instant photography, commercially introduced by the Polaroid Corporation in 1948, fueled the extraordinary growth of the legendary company. Edwin Land, Polaroid’s founder, cultivated a creative culture within his research and manufacturing enterprise—building an interdisciplinary community devoted to the technical and artistic excellence of the new photographic medium. A key contributor to the development of instant photography was Meroë Morse, an art history graduate of Smith College. At Polaroid Morse found exceptional opportunities for women in the post-war era. With no background in science or business, she became manager of Black and White Photographic Research, director of Special Photographic Research, a trusted advisor to Land, and liaison to Ansel Adams, a Polaroid consultant who tested the company’s prototype cameras and films. Morse embodied the creative ethos underpinning Land’s innovative company, bringing her intelligence and artistic sensibility to the advancement of a photographic medium that would come to have unique cultural and artistic significance.
From Concept to Product draws on the extensive holdings of the Polaroid Corporation Collection at Baker Library, Harvard Business School. This remarkably comprehensive archive includes research and development records, test photographs, advertising materials, film, corporate publications, legal and patent documents, cameras, and other Polaroid products.
This exhibition is organized by Baker Library Special Collections and Archives, Harvard Business School and supported by the de Gaspé Beaubien Family Endowment at Harvard Business School.
Review the website and video for our 2016 Polaroid exhibition, At the Intersection of Science and Art: Edwin H. Land and the Polaroid Corporation—The Formative Years, celebrating the opening of much of the collection to researchers. The exhibition traced Polaroid from its entrepreneurial beginnings to the launch of instant photography in 1948.