Unfinished Exhibition

Visualizing Myth, Memory, and the Shadow of the Civil War in Centennial America

By Susanna W. Gold

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Publish Date

2016

Publisher

Taylor & Francis Group

Language

eng

Pages

188

Description:

Philadelphia's 1876 Centennial Exhibition -- a spectacular international event celebrating one hundred years of American strength, unity, and freedom -- took place in the immediate wake of this trauma of war and the failures of reconstruction as a means to restore power and patriotism in the nation's struggle to rebuild itself. This is the first comprehensive examination of American art at the centennial, it explains the critical role of visual culture in negotiating memories of the nation's past that conflicted with the optimism that exhibition officials promoted. Supporting novel iconographical interpretations with myriad primary source material, author Susanna W. Gold demonstrates how the art galleries and the audiences who visited them addressed the lingering traumas of battle, the uneasy re-unification of North and South, and the persisting racial tensions in the post-Emancipation era. This careful consideration of the visual record exposes the complexities of the war's impact on Americans and clarifies how the Centennial art exhibition affected a nation still finding its direction at a critical moment in its history.