Description
Book SynopsisExplores the art exhibits at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, along with the circumstances of their creation, the ideological positions expressed through their installation, and the responses of viewers, including critics, collectors, and the general public.
Trade Review“Orcutt successfully argues that the who, the how, and the why of an exhibition are just as important—perhaps more so—than the contents. Indeed, this is where an exhibition’s power and posterity lie.”
—Elizabeth Meinke ARLIS/NA Reviews
“A richly detailed, satisfying visual, cultural, and historical account of American art at Philadelphia’s Centennial Exhibition of 1876. . . . Power and Posterity makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the American art on view at this signal event of the 19th-century (art) world. Highly recommended.”
—J. Decker Choice
“Demonstrating careful research and astute observation of the powerful role curatorial acts can play in the shaping of history, Orcutt’s insightful scholarship offers a fresh perspective on this pivotal moment in American art history and its continuing reverberations in the art world today.”
—Erin Pauwels Panorama
“Kimberly Orcutt has written an exhaustive history of Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exhibition and its ‘Centennial moment.’ Making use of a treasure trove of understudied primary sources, she presents an illuminating picture of the event while offering an in-depth analysis of the complicated cultural politics undergirding American art at the time. Informed by a museum studies perspective, this book will also offer a new methodological approach for our thinking about the fair.”
—Melissa Dabakis,author of A Sisterhood of Sculptors: American Artists in Nineteenth-Century Rome
“Impressively researched and lucidly argued, Kimberly Orcutt situates the art display at Philadelphia’s Centennial Exhibition of 1876 within broader discourses about Reconstruction, the shift to cosmopolitanism, and the rise of museum culture in the postbellum era. Power and Posterity is a valuable contribution to scholarship on American art and cultural history and adds to the rich and growing literature on world’s fairs in the United States.”
—Sarah Moore,author of Empire on Display: San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915
“Power and Posterity is the first study to investigate in depth the planning and staging of the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, as well as the full range of official, popular, and private responses to this widely attended and well-publicized event. Orcutt has orchestrated these accounts into an absorbing analysis of the ongoing critical debate over nationalism versus internationalism that reflected changes in American taste and culture.”
—Linda Ferber,Senior Art Historian and Museum Director Emerita, New-York Historical Society
Table of ContentsContents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction Writing History: A National Reckoning in Fairmount Park
Part 1 Artists: Shaping the Exhibition
Chapter 1 Confrontation in Philadelphia: Artists Create a Canon of American Art
Chapter 2 The American Art Exhibition: Arguments on the Walls
Part 2 Viewers and Critics: Responses to the Exhibition
Chapter 3 Experiencing the Nation’s First Blockbuster Exhibition
Chapter 4 Critics’ Responses: American Progress and Imaginary Exhibitions
Part 3 Buyers and Sellers: Defining a New Art Market
Chapter 5 The Foreign Exhibitors and the American “Taste Test”
Chapter 6 The Collectors’ Riposte: The New York Centennial Loan Exhibition
Conclusion Rewriting History: The Awards Controversy and the Afterlives of the Centennial Exhibition
Appendix: Committees and Awards
Notes
Bibliography
Credits
Index
