Enfilade

This special issue of HLQ arises from a conference held at the Huntington Library in September 2023:

Huntington Library Quarterly 87.2 (Summer 2024)

Paintings, Peepshows, and Porcupines: Exhibitions in London, 1763–1851

Edited by Jordan Bear and Catherine Roach

Dazzling variety characterized exhibitions in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain: boxing matches, automata, contemporary art shows, panoramas, dog beauty contests, and menageries all contributed to a flourishing display culture. Despite their differences, these attractions shared both techniques for engaging audiences and widely reverberating themes. All of the essays in this volume work across multiple sites of display. By examining the varied terrain of exhibitions collectively, this issue illuminates cultural preoccupations of the time, including the multifarious impact of empire and the productively ambiguous boundaries between the cultural expressions that were deemed low and those that were deemed high.

c o n t e n t s

• Jordan Bear and Catherine Roach, “Introduction: Exhibitions in London, 1763–1851,” pp. 153–63.

• Adam Eaker, “The Art of Marring a Face: Exhibiting Boxers in Georgian London,” pp. 165–82.

• Nicholas Robbins, “The Circumference of the Subject: Figuring Race at Egyptian Hall,” pp. 183–205.

• Rosie Dias, “Making Space for Empire: India in Panoramas and Dioramas, 1830–1851,” pp. 207–31.

• Holly Shaffer, “Provisioners, Cooks, Coffeehouses, and Clubs: Exhibiting Taste in Calcutta and London in the Early Nineteenth Century,” pp. 233–54.

• Jordan Bear, “The Sea Serpent of Regent Street: On the Evidentiary Strategies of Nineteenth-Century Exhibitions,” pp. 255–71.

• Catherine Roach, “Dog Shows: Porcelain Pugs and Pre-Raphaelite Painters in Thomas Earl’s Art and Nature,” pp. 273–90.

• Alison FitzGerald, “Centers and Peripheries: Exhibiting London’s ‘Marvels’ in Britain’s ‘Second City’,” pp. 291–311.

• John Plunkett, “An Early Moving Picture Industry? Exhibition Networks and the Panorama, 1810–1850,” pp. 313–35.