Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2020 July 22

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July 22

Art on refrigerators

When parents get a piece of art drawn by their child, or a report card or graded test or something, it’s common for them to hang it on their refrigerator door. Where does this practice come from? Was there a similar practice before fridges were invented, or did it come about after? 74.129.60.93 (talk) 17:49, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

I assume it has a lot to do with the history of refrigerator magnets. The Observer–Reporter article "Households getting stuck on refrigerator magnets" mentions a refrigerator magnet manufacturer who "suspects the refrigerator magnet explosion started around 1968 with a little magnetic disk with a clip stuck on it that stationery and office-supply stores sold to stick memes on file cabinets" ---Sluzzelin talk 18:04, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

added later ... sorry, I guess you're more interested in the history of parents displaying their children's art and success stories in the home than the history of generally sticking stuff on one's refrigerator door. ---Sluzzelin talk 18:08, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

When did parents start taking pride in their children's schoolwork? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:13, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

In the late 60s with the "everybody is special" movement. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 19:26, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

My parents had one of my early artistic endeavours framed (I was about five, so 1963 or 64).

This article suggests that interest in children's art started in the 1930s.

Children's Art Exhibition At Royal Institute Galleries 1952 British Pathé newsreel. Alansplodge (talk) 19:40, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

However, hanging things on refrigerators wasn't really possible until the invention of the fridge magnet, which this article says was patented by "William Zimmerman of St. Louis, Missouri, in the early 1970s". Alansplodge (talk) 19:43, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Did people previously not use other means of sticking things to refrigerators, such as sticky tape ("Commercial tapes were introduced in the early twentieth century", says the article)? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.199.211.254 (talk) 20:56, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

They would hang or tape their children's art on the wall, or pin it up on a notice board or something. The refrigerator door as exhibition space became popular only because of the ease of using refrigerator magnets.  --Lambiam 21:27, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

So, you are saying that this couldn't have actually happened because they didn't have fridge magnets? I assumed they would have fact-checked it before producing the skit. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 15:57, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure that Family Guy is a reliable source in respect of social history. Alansplodge (talk) 13:31, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Fridge magnets wouldn't have worked on my parents' first fridge bought back in the 1940. It was built of aluminium. I can't remember where my creations were hung, if at all. (I was a pretty crappy artist.) HiLo48 (talk) 22:34, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

In the late 1960s, before Mr. Zimmerman's invention, we had a set of plastic letters with tiny magnets on the back that could be used in the same way as a fridge magnet. They were manufactured for use on a magnetic board in a playroom, to familiarize children with spelling, but worked perfectly well on fridges as well. And I remember my parents hung things like school schedules and the like with these magnetized letters (not art, that was usually hung in our bedrooms with tacks or scotch tape). So it predates the invention of a specialized fridge magnet. Why the refrigerator? It's a large flat space in a room where there is a lot of circulation, and using magnets makes it simple to rotate whatever is hung in that prime space. Xuxl (talk) 12:00, 23 July 2020 (UTC)