Muybridge & Curtis

The Great Photographic Projects of the Gilded Age

May 27–October 14, 2017

Documenting what the eye cannot or would no longer see.

Gilded Age America witnessed the rapid and widespread expansion of photography, particularly as a tool of documentation in the natural and social sciences. Muybridge & Curtis considers the two vast photographic projects of the day: Eadweard Muybridge’s Animal Locomotion: An Electro Photographic Investigation of Connective Phases of Animal Movements (1887) and Edward S. Curtis’s The North American Indian, Being a Series of Volumes Picturing and Describing The Indians of the United States and Alaska (1907–1930). Working during the age of heavy tripods, large wood cameras, and glass plate negatives, Muybridge and Curtis made tens of thousands of negatives for their respective work of unparalleled scope. Both projects were realized for scholarly study through massive, costly publications. Animal Locomotion, produced under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania, contained 781 multiexposure plates printed with the collotype process. The North American Indian, underwritten in part by John Pierpont Morgan, filled 20 volumes with more than 2200 photogravures based on negatives made by Curtis. Muybridge & Curtis, drawn exclusively from works in the museum’s collections, considers the two projects within the context of early photography and their role in the developing natural and social sciences.

Eadweard Muybridge prints gift of Samuel Moyerman

 Edward Curtis prints gift of Angelo Brutico, Jr. P'19

EVENTS


Screening and presetnation of Curtis's pioneering film In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914) / Shannon Egan

Public Lecture: Running Performance: From Muybridge and Motion to the Physics of Ground Fource Application / Peter Weyand

 


 

Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, plate 627, 1880s

Photogravure

  • Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, plate 627, 1880s
  • Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion
  • Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion
  • Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, plate 493
  • Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, plate 483
  • Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, plate 517
  • Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, plate 535
  • Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, plate 538
  • Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, plate 540
  • Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, plate 541
  • Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, plate 588
  • Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, plate 627
  • Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, plate 646
  • Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, plate 695
  • Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, plate 712
  • Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, plate 715
  • Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, plate 722
  • Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, plate 742
  • Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, plate 748
  • Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, plate 759
  • Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, plate 764
  • Edward Curtis, The North American Indian, Watching the Dancers (Hopi)
  • Edward Curtis, The North American Indian
  • Edward Curtis, The North American Indian
  • Edward Curtis, The North American Indian
  • Edward Curtis, The North American Indian
  • Edward Curtis, The North American Indian
  • Edward Curtis, The North American Indian
  • Edward Curtis, The North American Indian
  • Edward Curtis, The North American Indian
  • Edward Curtis, The North American Indian
  • Edward Curtis, The North American Indian
  • Edward Curtis, The North American Indian
  • Edward Curtis, The North American Indian
  • Edward Curtis, The North American Indian
  • Edward Curtis, The North American Indian
  • Edward Curtis, The North American Indian
  • Edward Curtis, The North American Indian
  • Edward Curtis, The North American Indian
  • Edward Curtis, The North American Indian
  • Edward Curtis, The North American Indian
  • Edward Curtis, The North American Indian
  • Edward Curtis, The North American Indian
  • Edward Curtis, The North American Indian