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Exhibiting Animals in Spain, Britain, and the Americas, 1850-1910
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- Author(s) / Creator(s)
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SSHRC IG awarded 2021. Non-human animals, both wild and domesticated, were exhibited widely during the nineteenth century. They appeared live on racetracks, at circuses, in rodeos, and at agricultural fairs; mounted through the art of taxidermy in natural history museums; as the subject of sculptural monuments decorating fairgrounds, parks, and zoos; and on canvases in exhibitions of fine art. The relationship between the humans responsible for such displays, the animals in them, and the enthusiastic audiences who viewed these popular events ranged from partnership to exploitation, with some exhibitionary models respecting animal agency to a greater degree than others. This interdisciplinary project challenges the assumptions, goals, and values of three distinct bodies of scholarship, the history of art and visual culture, theories of exhibition and display, and animal studies, and its two complementary publications will explore the exhibition of animals in the transnational Atlantic World. The first is a multi-authored anthology of essays on exhibitions in Europe and the Americas that will present new case studies exploring a broad variety of animal displays. The second is a sole-authored book that will focus on exhibitions of the horse--an animal whose relationship to human beings changed dramatically as a result of the Industrial Revolution--in two European countries deeply invested in the colonial enterprise (Spain and Great Britain) and two previously colonized American nations (the United States and Argentina) that link their histories to Europe in complexly layered ways. This art historical research project will benefit all who hope to better understand how the viewing of animals in the nineteenth century has led to our failure to work ethically with animals today, helping to restore a more balanced equilibrium to human-animal relations in the future.
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- Date created
- 2020-09-23
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- Type of Item
- Research Material
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- © Boone, M. Elizabeth. All rights reserved other than by permission. This document is embargoed to those without UAlberta CCID until 2028