Lauren Padgett is a PhD student at Leeds Trinity University. Her doctoral research explores representations of Victorian women in contemporary museum displays in the Yorkshire and Humber region. Lauren has a BA in History and English and a MA in Museum Studies, and worked in museums for several years. On Saturday 28th November, 2015 was the second meeting of the Colloquium of Nineteenth-Century Studies, hosted at the University of Leicester. The theme was ‘Curating the Nineteenth-Century’. The day consisted of
Read moreTag: Museum Exhibition
Slums, Shopping and Spectacle: The Kirkgate Victorian Street
I have always relished stepping onto Kirkgate, the replica, indoor Victorian street at York Castle Museum. When I first visited six years ago, the street had recently undergone its first major redevelopment project. Last year, it received a further £300,000 reworking, focussing on creating more authentic shop spaces, a new slum area, and incorporating more of the city’s chocolate heritage. Fig. 1. The grocer’s shop at the updated Kirkgate street, York Museums Trust. The street was originally created by and
Read moreMerrick Burrow, ‘The Imperial Souvenir: Things and Masculinities in H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines & Allan Quatermain’
By Merrick Burrow (University of Huddersfield) This post accompanies Merrick Burrow’s Journal of Victorian Culture article published (2013). It can be read in full here. H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines ends with a letter in which Sir Henry Curtis, one of the main protagonists, highlights the significance of hunting and battle trophies brought back from the ‘lost world’ of Kukuanaland for his renewed sense of his own hegemonic masculinity: The tusks of the great bull that killed poor Khiva
Read moreThe Cult of Beauty: The Victorian Avant-Garde 1860-1900
by Pearl Chaozon-Bauer University of California, Davis Upon entering “The Cult of Beauty: The Victorian Avant-Garde 1860-1900,” an exhibit at the Legion of Honor that features art work and pieces from poets, painters, sculptors, designers and architects who produced art for the sake of art, I expected to be intoxicated and affected by the beauty that the exhibit promised to deliver. Since these artists championed the axiom that the only purpose of art is to be beautiful, I anticipated losing
Read moreA Man of Charms: Edward Lovett Exhibition at the Wellcome Collection
Edward Lovett (1852-1933) was an amateur folklorist who, from the age of 8, was an avid collector of charms and amulets. Despite his ‘amateur’ status, Lovett was widely considered to be a leading authority in British folklore and superstitious tradition. Lovett’s reputation was borne out of the many excursions he made to working-class districts of London. He visited shops, dockyards and costmongers looking for discarded or lost objects. It seems only fitting that nearly a hundred years later, his rather
Read moreCharles Dickens at the Morgan Library
Jessica DeCoux City University of New York There are a few things you might want to keep in mind when visiting the Morgan Library and Museum’sM exhibit “Dickens at 200.” The first, and perhaps most important, is that the operative word in the institution’s name is “library.” While the Morgan owns an extensive collection of drawings, paintings and art objects, it is primarily an archive of written and printed materials: manuscripts, first editions, rare books and pamphlets, and printed music,
Read more