Performing Difference in Nineteenth-Century Exhibitions
A Lecture by Professor Lucian Gomoll
Part of the theater class
Performing the Museum
Tuesday April 26
1-2:20 in Macgowan 2310C
Space is limited: Please email Gwynn Shanks at [log in to unmask] by Monday, April 25th to RSVP to reserve a spot
Exhibitions in the nineteenth century commonly featured displays of difference, or the staging of people as abnormal and exotic Others in contrast to a putatively normal public. Such presentations
of the live body were invitations for audiences to make sense of colonial relationships, racial differences, new injuries caused by war and industry, and the role of science in culture. They also provoked unpredictable responses and competed with other forms
of exhibition for the attention of viewers. Thus near the end of the century, institutional antagonism and hostile legislation worked to eliminate live displays from what was once a more inclusive exhibitionary network. This lecture historicizes the quiet
ocular-centrism of museums by revealing how such behavior became paradigmatic in the twentieth century as a result of the push to eliminate live and popular productions from the exhibitionary circuit.
Lucian Gomoll
is an Assistant Professor in Liberal Studies and the Honors College at CSU Los Angeles.
He previously held a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Wesleyan University.
Gomoll is a critical theorist who writes about disability, gender, race, indigeneity, species, sexuality, museums, art, and the sciences.
He gave the keynote address “Chronotopography, a Curatorial Method” at the University of Alberta’s 2013 conference
Encoding/Decoding. His writing has been published in numerous books and journals, and he was a guest editor for a special issue of
Collections on the topic of curating. For more, visit: luciangomoll.com
Space is limited: Please email Gwynn Shanks at [log in to unmask] by Monday, April 25th to RSVP to reserve a spot