Exhibits
Dare to Stare: 19th-Century Circus and Sideshow Portraits
September 28, 2026–November 10, 2026
Curated by Theresa Leininger-Miller, Ph.D., Professor of Art History at the University of Cincinnati
Dare to Stare examines celebrity culture in 19th-century circus and sideshow portraits and how these once-ubiquitous cartes-de-viste, tintypes, and cabinet cards in private homes entertained, educated, and served as memory aids.
Step right up!
Enormous crowds engaged in bold looking at circuses and sideshows. Thrilled by colorful spectacles, death-defying acts, exotic cultures, wild animals, rousing music, and amusing clowns, audiences savored both watching dynamic performances in person and sustained gazing at performers privately afterwards by buying their carte-de-visite and cabinet card portraits.
Featured are bearded ladies, living skeletons, fat women, tattooed men, giants, conjoined twins, armless/legless people, a three-legged boy, a four-legged woman, snake charmers, elastic skinned men, albinos, knife throwers, acrobats, aerialists, bicyclists, contortionists, divers, fire breathers, jugglers, little people, sharpshooters, sword swallowers, strong men, and trapeze artists. Trained animals include elephants, big cats, horses, bears, dogs, birds, goats, and pigs, as well as snakes.
The three-part exhibition includes 240 objects, including pitch books and souvenir rings from giants, borrowed from private collections in Kansas and Ohio.
This project shifts the historical focus of such photographs on spectacle and curiosity to one of empathy and a deeper understanding of self-presentation and performativity by examining choices that sitters and photographers made regarding clothing, jewelry, hairstyle, pose, and gesture, as well as autographs and inscriptions on card mounts.
Why were such portraits so popular and what they express about visual culture in the U.S.? How did consumers view, share, and display their souvenirs? The intention is to analyze such photographs in terms of the sitters’ agency, dignity, and autonomy. While some performers developed highly specific skills, others transformed circumstances of birth with physical anomalies to make a living by captivating audiences with their distinctive appearances. Disabilities Studies demands that we examine the achievements of differing bodies from the past as vital to all Americans today.
The Wooden Dolls by Alexander Girard
(freestanding cases on first floor of library)
The Wooden Dolls by Alexander Girard are a large family of wooden figures representing human and animal characters. Girard designed them in 1952 for his own use as decorative objects for his home.
Furniture Miniatures Collection
(freestanding cases on first floor of library)
For over two decades, the Vitra Design Museum has been making miniature replicas of milestones in furniture design from its collection. The Furniture Miniatures Collection encapsulates the entire history of industrial furniture design – moving from Historicism and Art Nouveau to the Bauhaus and New Objectivity, from Radical Design and Postmodernism all the way up to the present day.