The moment of the unveiling of a public monument marks the end of a process. The need for commemoration was felt, an artist engaged to express the idea, and the means found to bring the project to realization. Whatever the intended meaning, once in the public eye an installation acquires its own history. The interpretation…
The artist Edward Beyer came to the U.S. from Germany after the Revolution of 1848. For several years Beyer, a graduate of the Düsseldorf Academy, traveled around the northeast U.S. and Ohio, sketching, painting oil landscapes, and exhibiting a moving panorama. In the mid-1850s he traveled to Virginia where he made panoramic oils in the…
The 19th Century was the Age of Pictures, when imagery of all types multiplied and entered everyday life. A key agent was the new medium of lithography. Lithographic printing was seen in postcards and letterheads, labels and wrappers, and tickets and show bills. Framed lithographic prints hung in parlors, lobbies, and offices. The marvelous world…
Henry Brown escaped from slavery by shipping himself in a box from Richmond to Philadelphia. This bold feat was only the first act of a remarkable career. “Resurrected” from the box as Henry Box Brown, he appeared at antislavery meetings as a singer and speaker. In 1850, Brown produced a moving panorama, a kind of giant painted scroll presented in a theater, called Mirror of Slavery and toured it around New England and then across the Atlantic. Trace this remarkable journey with Jeffrey Ruggles, former Curator of Prints and Photographs, Virginia Historical Society, and author of The Unboxing of Henry Brown, Library of Virginia, 2003.
