"The World on View: Objects from Universal Expositions, 1851-1915" Exhibition Opening

This exhibition will open with remarks from Dr. Anita Allen, Vice Provost for Faculty; Lynn Marsden-Atlass, Executive Director, Arthur Ross Gallery; and Dr. André Dombrowski, Associate Professor of the History of Art.  Dr. Dombrowski will introduce this year's curatorial seminar students.



 

 

Naoko Adachi
, Olivia Dudnik
, Nicholas Escobar
, Jessica Hough
, Emma Lasry
, Anna Linehan
, Isabelle Lynch, 
Ramey Mize
, Bryan Norton
, Francesca Richman
, Nicholas Rogers
, Serena Qiu
, Erin Wrightson

 

 

How do objects made for universal expositions condense the world and put it on display? The World on View is the culmination of a curatorial seminar that explores this crucial aspect in the history of globalization. The course and exhibition examine competing visions of the world and mechanisms of international exchange, materialized as objects displayed at world’s fairs. Examples include an early electric water kettle; a photo-sculpture executed at the 1867 Paris exhibition; Chinese export porcelain and Japanese metalwork designed for international consumption; Manchester textiles made for the Senegalese market; Chitimacha tribal baskets woven in St. Louis in 1904; and a Paul Gauguin painting associated with the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle. Such objects exemplified the period’s advances in art and technology, yet they also demonstrated an imperial frame for locking cultures into hierarchical dependency. This exhibition brings together works dating from the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London through San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915, borrowed from the university’s as well as other local Philadelphia collections.

 

The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalog.

 

Click HERE for more information.