Dare to Stare: 19th-Century Circus and Sideshow Portraits
Details
In the 19th century, enormous crowds engaged in bold looking at circuses and sideshows. Thrilled by colorful spectacles, death-defying acts, exotic cultures, wild animals, rousing music, and amusing clowns, audiences savored both watching dynamic performances in person and sustained, private gazing at performers in buying their carte-de-visite and cabinet card portraits. Among these portraits were bearded ladies, conjoined twins, snake charmers, albinos, contortionists, fire breathers, little people, and sword swallowers.
By examining choices that sitters and photographers made regarding clothing, jewelry, hairstyle, pose, and gesture, as well as autographs and inscriptions on card mounts, this exhibition shifts the historical focus of such photographs from spectacle and curiosity to empathy and a deeper understanding of self-presentation and performativity. This interrogation asks why such portraits were so popular, what they expressed about visual culture in the United States, and how consumers viewed, shared, and displayed their souvenirs. The intention is to analyze such photographs in terms of the sitters’ agency, dignity, and autonomy. While some performers developed highly specific skills to achieve notoriety, others transformed circumstances of birth with physical anomalies to make a living by captivating audiences with their distinctive appearances. Disabilities Studies demand that we consider the achievements of differing bodies from the past as vital to all Americans today.
Artists: Aaron A. Smith, Abraham Bogardus, Abraham S. Feinberg, Albert W. Wood, Alfred D. Goldsmith, Alvin B. Warfel, Andrew Alison Grier, Andrew Augustus Grier, Andrew J. Simpson, Anson Lentz, Antoine Lumiére, August Wilhelm Obermüller, Benjamin J. Falk, Bransby Cooper Pentz, Caroline B. James, Charles B. Conant, Charles DeForest Fredricks, Charles E. Ridenour, Charles Eisemann, Charles Frederick Treble, Charles G. Carleton, Charles Henkel, Charles Lincoln Lentz, Charles Sweet, Culver Pictures, Inc., Daniel Downey, Daniel T. Cowell, David Husted, David Thomas Burrell, Dorrance F. Butler, E. Percy Olive, Edward Anthony, Edward Bierstadt, Edward G. Zoellner, Elmer Chickering, Enrico Negretti, Ezra J. Pottter, Frank Dawson, Frederick William Clark, George Albert, George Albert Swords, George Kendall Warren, George M. Dempsie, George M. Watson, George Wilbert Browning, George William Howie, Gertrude Davis, Gustave Moses, Henry T. Hughes, Henry Tiebout Anthony, Herbert Goodridge, Isaiah N. Packard, James A. Linder, James M. Goins, James V. Brown, John Carbutt, John Dey Maxwell, John Friis, John H. Fitzgibbon, John White Hurn, Joseph Havard, Joseph J. Caddy, Joseph Samo, Joseph Zambra, L. F. Dobler, Lorenzo Marvin Baker, Margot, Mark Allen & Co, Mathew Brady, Max P. Thiele, Michael A. Wesner, Minnie K. Wachtman, Napoleon Sarony, Ray D. Chapman, Stephen David Morris, Stereoscopic Co., The Rembrandt Studio, Thomas A. Brown, Thomas S. Johnson, Walter Burton Wright, Washington Lafayette Germon, William Downey, William E. Steckbauer, William H. Swords, William Henry Brown
With Theresa Leininger-Miller (curator)
Cost: Free to the Public