Visualizing 19th-Century New York

Visualizing 19th-Century New York examines New York City—a spectacle for [...]

Visualizing 19th-Century New York examines New York City—a spectacle for residents and visitors alike—through prints and photographs produced by cultural entrepreneurs who created a vast commercial market for their images of the booming metropolis.

Nineteenth-century New York City was a visual experience, a spectacle for residents and visitors alike. This Bard Graduate Center Focus Gallery exhibition examines how New York’s cultural entrepreneurs turned to the production of woodcuts, aquatints, lithographs, and photographs to make sense of their booming metropolis and to promote their own manufactures to a national, indeed international, market.

As creative director and instructor for an accompanying class, I led faculty, staff, and students through the research, development, and deployment of a digital publication and two touchscreen gallery interactives. The still-active, web-accessible digital publication includes an interactive map that provides access to essays and exhibition objects. The two touchscreen interactives, Broadway and Ann and Behind the Scenes, provide interactive in-gallery experiences of supplemental material and are part of a digital publication. Developed out of student research and prototyping, the final version was created by the firm CHIPS.