A Pageant of Spectacles: Chromolithography in America

Last night (30 November 2023) we opened my new exhibition at the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education, University of Southern Maine. It’s been over a year in preparation, mostly thinking and developing categories of work to be exhibited, then planning the walls and label placement, all ending in a wild week of installation and label writing!

The image in the blog roll is of Levi Yaggy’s 1887 schematic world map, probably my favorite graphic in an entire show of remarkable works (although its content is reprehensible by present-day standards).

Kevin Callahan of Kimball Street Studios, Lewiston, did a simply amazing job on the installation. OML’s executive director, Dr. Libby Bischof, suggested we hang the show like a nineteenth-century gallery, an idea I embraced (‘cos more great objects to show!). The result is that we have more items on the walls and in the cases than in any previous exhibition. OML’s gallery generally permits about 40 items … A Pageant of Spectacles has 92. That’s huge! and utterly exhausting to install.

OML’s hanging system is really intended for more modern, low-density exhibitions, so Keven really had to work to fulfill the vision and my desired structure. But everything worked out well (except for a couple of minor elements that need to be added and one difficult framing that has to be redone …). The result is simply stunning.

In lieu of a web-version of the show (which I’ll announce when it’s prepared) and the printed catalog which we want to do in the Spring, I took a few brief videos right before the opening; showing them here is a bit of an experiment as I’m not really a video kind of guy. The show is up through 29 June 2023, and all images are available at oshermaps.org.

Entering the show and first section on nineteenth-century map color

Second section, devoted to the stunning graphics of Levi Yaggy’s pedagogic works (whose racist and imperialistic content I do not endorse!):

Third section on the process of chromolithography, using a sample of the 44 “progressive proofs” published by George Ashdown Audsley (1883). To see the whole, and the explanation of the process by the French art printer Alfred Lemercier, see https://oshermaps.org/container?id=133841.

Fourth section is on chromolithographic “realist” bird’s-eye views, first in the US Civil War (1861–65) and then in the period 1890–1914 for promoting trolley car or ferry access to touristic landscapes:

Fifth section is on further visualizations of the spectacular, but now of political events:

Then there are several cases. Can you spot the exceedingly rare but famous Man of Commerce?

The flatbed holds the wonderful Atlas Pintersco of Mexico, by Antonio García Cubas, another of my favorites:

And the final wall …

I hope you enjoy(ed) the videos. If so, come and see the exhibition for yourself — it’s really quite remarkable!