Before air conditioners started cooling the country, Americans fanned themselves when they got hot. Fans could be plain or fancy, riotous or refined, meticulously crafted or mass-produced, but everyone had them and used them. "Cool Breezes: Handheld Fans in Fashion, Art, and Advertising," on view through Jan. 19, 2005, at the Wisconsin Historical Museum in downtown Madison, introduces exhibition visitors to the world of handheld fans and the roles fans have played in the everyday lives of Americans.

"Cool Breezes" explores fans as common objects in American popular culture and presents a wide range of fan genres, from sturdy folding fans built for daily use, to fragile and elaborately decorated fans that served as fashion accessories and flirtation tools.

"Cool Breezes" also explores fans as part of a visually rich design tradition and as a guide to advertising and cultural developments in twentieth-century America. A brief history of fans, beginning with Asian and European traditions, sets the context from which American fans evolved.

This traveling exhibition of 80 fans is organized by ExhibitsUSA and curated by Joyce Cheney, an independent scholar with a strong interest in textiles, folk art and popular culture. "Cool Breezes" continues her examination of seemingly ordinary objects to discover the living history they contain—both the creativity that went into their making and the human stories they tell.

The Wisconsin Historical Museum (WHM) is supplementing the traveling show with more than forty of its own handheld fans from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The WHM collection includes fans of the Milwaukee elite, politically themed fans, souvenir fans and wedding fans. Among the treasures of the WHM fans is a silk and mother-of-pearl Duvelleroy fan that once belonged to a member of the Pabst family, and a collection of Zona Gale Breese's souvenir fans. With fans ranging from breezy gifts to elegant and refined fashion accessories, and from political propaganda to cool advertising, this exhibit has something for everyone.

The Wisconsin Historical Museum is located on Madison's Capitol Square at 30 N. Carroll St. and is open Tuesday through Saturday from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. Admission is by a donation of $4.00 per adult, $3.00 per child and $10.00 per family. Call 608-264-6555 for more information, or visit the museum online.