‘Mr Peanut has a life of his own’: San Francisco bids farewell to a curator who saw ads as art

Ellen Havre Weis directed the Museum of Modern Mythology, celebrating the likes of the Michelin Man and Colonel Sanders

The Jolly Green Giant, Mr Clean and the Frito Bandito lost one of their most enthusiastic supporters last month with the passing of Ellen Havre Weis, a California museum founder and author who recognized the mythology in America's advertising characters.

Weis co-founded and directed the Museum of Modern Mythology, a once renowned San Francisco tourist destination where a vinyl Michelin Man rubbed elbows with a lifesize statue of Colonel Sanders and a plastic figurine of the monocled Mr Peanut featured among thousands of other advertising characters.