Webinar: "How to Save a Circus Poster: Collection, Conservation, Context"
“How to Save a Circus Poster: Collection, Conservation, Context” Babette Gehnrich, Lauren B. Hewes, and Matthew Wittmann Presented on Wednesday, January 19, 2022. If you found a box containing a jumbled pile of old, crumpled paper, would you keep it? You might if you knew it would turn out to be an eight-foot-tall circus poster that includes the earliest known depiction of an American circus ring! In this webinar, Babette Gehnrich, AAS chief conservator; Lauren B. Hewes, AAS vice president for collections; and Matthew Wittmann, curator of the Harvard Theatre Collection at Houghton Library, discuss the story behind salvaging an 1830s poster, printed by Jared W. Bell of New York and intended for display on buildings lining the parade route of an early traveling menagerie. This webinar also closely examines the complex conservation work required to stabilize and piece together this enormous piece of ephemera in the AAS collections and its implications for what we know about early American popular entertainment.
“How to Save a Circus Poster: Collection, Conservation, Context” Babette Gehnrich, Lauren B. Hewes, and Matthew Wittmann Presented on Wednesday, January 19, 2022. If you found a box containing a jumbled pile of old, crumpled paper, would you keep it? You might if you knew it would turn out to be an eight-foot-tall circus poster that includes the earliest known depiction of an American circus ring! In this webinar, Babette Gehnrich, AAS chief conservator; Lauren B. Hewes, AAS vice president for collections; and Matthew Wittmann, curator of the Harvard Theatre Collection at Houghton Library, discuss the story behind salvaging an 1830s poster, printed by Jared W. Bell of New York and intended for display on buildings lining the parade route of an early traveling menagerie. This webinar also closely examines the complex conservation work required to stabilize and piece together this enormous piece of ephemera in the AAS collections and its implications for what we know about early American popular entertainment.