Ephemeral Spectacles, Exhibition Spaces and Museums: 1750-1918

This book examines ephemeral exhibitions from 1750 to 1918. In an era of acceleration and elusiveness, these transient spaces functioned as microcosms in which reality was shown, simulated, staged, imagined, experienced and known. They therefore had a dimension of spectacle to them, as the volume demonstrates. Against this backdrop, the different chapters deal with a plethora of spaces and spatial installations: the Wunderkammer, the spectacle garden, cosmoramas and panoramas, the literary space, the temporary museum, and the alternative exhibition space.

Dominique Bauer is Assistant Professor of History at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Leuven, Belgium, and a member of the Centre d’Analyse Culturelle de la Première Modernité at the Université Catholique de Louvain. Camilla Murgia is Assistant Professor in History of Art at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. Previously, she was Junior Lecturer and Substitute Senior Lecturer in History of Art at the University of Lausanne, where she researched space, theatre, and staging in nineteenth-century France.