An Old Fisherman's Wife

Breton Girl Looking After Plants in the Hothouse

Portrait of Cecilie Trier, née Melchior

A Limier Briquet Hound

Anna Leafing Through a Portfolio of Prints

Amelia Eliza van Leeuwen (1862-1923). Echtgenote van Christiaan Bernard Tilanus, chirurg en orthopedist te Amsterdam

Dorothea and Francesca

Une Martyre (Saint Thechla)

By a Clear Fountain

Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

Le frère et la soeur, Penmarc'h

At the River's Bend (On the River II)

Julia Ward Howe

Drikkende ung pige

Portret van Emile Auguste Carolus-Duran

Self-Portrait as a Chimera

Self-Portrait in a Spanish Costume

The Gathering at the Orchid Pavilion (front); Geese among Reeds (back)

Maternal Caress

Sappho

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Old Arrow Maker

Clasped Hands of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning

World’s Fairs were international gatherings that showcased art and technology. At the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago, women from several countries exhibited work in the Palace of Fine Arts and the “Women’s Pavilion.” Elite, white “Lady Managers” organized the Pavilion, while excluding women of color from leadership roles. The Columbian Exposition celebrated the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s genocidal landing in the Americas. Its overall vision equated whiteness and masculinity with “civilization.” Works by women artists from Japan, Cuba, and Mexico provided a limited but significant counterpoint. Here, we feature a selection of works by women who exhibited at the 1893 World’s Fair, most of them from Europe and the United States. The works from Curationist’s partner collections aren’t necessarily the objects from the Fair, but they do provide a unique survey of women artists active at the turn of the century. Note, particularly, the many portraits of famous feminists.

Women Artists at the World's Fair

Divination Mirror

Bronze mirror

Mirror with "TLV" Pattern

Mirror with Jaguar or Coyote Mosaic

Mirror Back with Great Goddess

Mirror (Shinjūkyō) Based on Han Dynasty Prototype with Cosmological Design

Created by Reina Gattuso. 
Many ancient peoples viewed mirrors as magical. They believed mirrors were portals to the spiritual realm or tools with which to divine the future. 
There is a scientific explanation for how mirrors reflect light, of course. But this knowledge doesn’t stop their luminous surfaces from seeming magical. Across time and place, human beings have viewed reflective surfaces as portals to the divine or to the future. 

The first mirrors were likely the reflective surfaces of still water. Human-made mirrors entered the archaeological record around 8,000 years ago in Anatolia.1 Most societies associated mirrors with beauty and personal grooming. But some also attached a deeper ritual significance to them. 
 
This collection features ritually significant mirrors from ancient cultures around the world. Ancient Chavín-Cupisnique people likely used mirrors for divination, and buried mirrors with their dead.2 Aztec peoples, meanwhile, included small mirrors as part of royal regalia,3 while ancient Etruscans ritually smashed mirrors they included in tombs4. Ancient cultures in China and Japan decorated mirrors with symbolism that situated their users at the symbolic center of the cosmos.5 
 

Citations: 

1 Castro, Joseph. “Who Invented the Mirror?” Livescience, 28 March 2013, https://www.livescience.com/34466-who-invented-mirror.html. Accessed 25 May 2022. 
2 “Mirror.” Dallas Museum of Art, https://collections.dma.org/artwork/3288058. Accessed 25 May 2022. 
3 “Mirror with Jaguar or Coyote Mosaic.” Art Institute Chicago, https://www.artic.edu/artworks/132675/mirror-with-jaguar-or-coyote-mosaic. Accessed 25 May 2022. See also “Mirror Back with Great Goddess.” The Cleveland Museum of Art, https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1989.65. Accessed 25 May 2022. 
 
4 De Grummond, Nancy T. “On Mutilated Mirrors.” Votives, Places and Rituals in Etruscan Religion. Brill, 1 Jan. 2008. https://brill.com/previewpdf/book/edcoll/9789047442622/Bej.9789004170452.i-292_012.xml. Accessed 25 May 2022. 
 
5 “Mirror with “TLV” Pattern.” Art Institute Chicago, https://www.artic.edu/artworks/10522/mirror-with-tlv-pattern. Accessed 25 May 2022. See also “Mirror (Shinjūkyō) Based on Han Dynasty Prototype with Cosmological Design.” The Met, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/44835. Accessed 25 May 2022.

Magic Mirrors

Partial coffee service (Déjeuner “Culture et Récolte du cacao”)

Coffee cup (part of a service)

Coffee cup and saucer (part of a service)

Coffee Pot

Peep-show Section; Coffee

The Woman Taking Coffee

Coffee Cup and Saucer

Tea and Coffee Service

Coffee and tea service (déjeuner chinois réticulé)

Coffee Vendor

Coffee or chocolate pot

Tea and coffee set (teapot, coffeepot, milk jug, sugar bowl)

Coffee Caddy with Chinese-inspired Decoration

Created by Sangita Pawar. 

Coffee is an integral part of many people's morning routines, but its bitter history is not common knowledge. Native to Ethiopia, coffee beans made their way across the globe through the exploitation of labor and invasion of land during the Atlantic Slave Trade. Once a drink used primarily in spiritual and cultural rituals, coffee quickly came to be viewed as a luxurious, leisure time experience accessible only to upper class (often white) groups. 
This collection explores how coffee was consumed and depicted in European and United States society in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Coffee's Bitter History

Tsuba with a Hawk, Sparrows and Chrysanthemums

Pair of Sword-Grip Ornaments (Menuki)

Sword Guard (Tsuba) Depicting Eagle Preying on Monkey (猿捕食猛禽図鐔)

Sword Guard (Tsuba)

Tsuka with Horse, Gourd and Rooster

Tsuba with One Hundred Monkeys

Tsuba with Deer Caught in a Storm

Sword Guard (Tsuba) with Puppy Playing with Shell on Cord

Detail gewelfschildering in zaal 167 in 1929

Created by Reina Gattuso. 
For more than a thousand years, Japanese sword makers crafted a rich vocabulary of practical and decorative elements. Swordsmiths outfitted samurai, feudal Japan’s elite fighting and administrative class. Master swordsmiths, often presiding over esteemed workshops, fashioned the sword blades. Then, they commissioned other craftspeople to create the sword’s additional elements. Two of these elements are menuki and tsuba. Menuki are pairs of ornaments, resembling brooches, that help the user grip the sword. Sword makers originally developed menuki to cover the nails (mekugi) on a sword’s hilt (tsuka). Tsuba are guards that separate the hilt of the sword from the blade. Tsuba originated as early as the third century CE as simple iron rings that kept the user’s hand from slipping. Eventually, sword makers began crafting ornamental tsuba and menuki made of gold, silver, copper, and other precious metals. Their details are meticulous and playful, depicting nature scenes, popular stories, and abstract designs.
Today, museums often collect menuki and tsuba as standalone objects, separate from their original blades. This collection features tsuba and menuki from the 1600s–1900s. It highlights the delightful, often comical use of animal imagery in these small masterpieces. Japanese myth is full of animals, each with their own symbolic meaning. This meaning was often a reflection of their place in the zodiac. The lively, strikingly detailed animals portrayed on swords also reflect the long tradition of Japanese artists drawing on the natural world. Sometimes fierce, sometimes funny, the querulous monkeys, beneficent elephants, and mighty crustaceans that scamper across these objects likely accompanied warriors into battle—and lived to tell the tale.

The Playful Menageries of Menuki and Tsuba

Young Worker Vol. 3 No. 2

Placard stating "I AM A MAN" carried by Arthur J. Schmidt in 1968 Memphis March

Flyer advertising student strike against the Vietnam War

Flyer advertising a donation drive to support African Freedom Fighters

Old Jim Crow Has Got to Go!

Pinback Button Worn By Ethel L. Payne

Broadsheet relating to a worker's strike in Orizaba, workers holding up the Mexican flag, flanked by soldiers

Curated by Blake Palmer. Workers’ movements and labor unions have played a critical role in many political and social justice efforts. Fights to improve labor conditions, combat fascism and imperialism, and achieve racial and gender equity have all been shaped by the words and actions of laborers. Posters, flyers, and pamphlets have been an important part of how labor movements communicate: rallying workers to strike, agitating for political resistance, publicizing their demands, and educating other working-class people. These works from post-industrial revolution workers’ groups in Europe and North America show the shared commitment to justice that connects diverse labor movements.

When Workers Speak: Labor Posters and Pamphlets

Mechanical Dog

Netsuke in the form of a fisherman in rain wear

Figure of a man with an oryx, a monkey, and a leopard skin

Bracelet

Officer's Sword

Created by Max Levin. 
For millennia, ivory has been a prized material for carving ceremonial objects, tools, and artworks. The hard, off-white material does not burn in fire or warp in water. It composes the tusks and teeth of many animals, including elephants, hippopotami, walruses, sperm whales, and narwhals. Ivory was also harvested from now-extinct species of mammoths and mastodons. 

This collection focuses on works in ivory that depict or relate to hunting and extinction, including—ironically—the very hunting tools needed to kill animals for their ivory. For example, with “Figure of A Man With an Oryx, A Monkey, A Leopard Skin,” an artist in the 8th Century BCE shaped ivory into an intricate all-over scene of hunting and domestication, evoked by the held horns of the oryx and the flowing spotted leopard pelt.

Ivory: Memories of Animals, Before and After Extinction

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