The Seal Cove Auto Museum has been recognized for its significant work in the world of automobile museums, further establishing the institution as a cultural leader in ensuring that an important era from our collective past is shared and not forgotten.
In March, the Museum brought home two “NAAMY” awards from the annual conference of the National Association of Automobile Museums (NAAM). The Seal Cove Auto Museum won the Exhibit NAAMY for their Selling Lifestyle & Leisure: Art, Advertising, and the Automobile exhibit; and won the Events & Promotions category for their Brass Club Speakeasy.
The Museum also received a nomination in the Events & Promotion category for its Senior Mixer event, which is held each April at the Museum in partnership with Birch Bay Retirement Village, Parker Ridge Retirement Community, and Friends in Action. This year the Senior Mixer will be held on Monday, April 15, at 2:00 pm.
Selling Lifestyle and Leisure chronicles the changes in advertising brought about by the invention of the automobile. Early autos were an expensive, impractical luxury, and new techniques were needed to convince people to buy one. Moving from text-based ads that proclaimed the attributes of a product, artists began to create image-based ads that were designed to evoke an emotional response, a technique we take for granted today. The exhibit introduces the artists who developed these ads, and the lasting changes they brought about. The cars are paired with advertisements of the time, as well as other ads that help to tell the story of advertising in America. The exhibit will continue through October of 2019.
The Brass Club Speakeasy is a popular event offered by the Museum in the depth of winter to relieve cabin fever by transforming the Museum into the Brass Club. Guests dress in 20s garb and dance to a live brass swing band, play charity blackjack, get silly in a photo booth, enjoy specialty cocktails, and visit with friends long into the night. The event has introduced the Museum to those who have never visited previously, increased the Museum’s membership, and most importantly provided a fun event that local residents can look forward to each winter.
The prestigious awards presented by NAAM honor the hard work, creative initiatives, and unique perspectives of automobile-focused museums throughout the United States and Canada. As an organization, NAAM’s goal is to cultivate public awareness of the cultural, historical, and technological significance of the automobile and promote such museums as valuable cultural institutions.