Exhibit

“ When a genuine exhibit of children’s work is brought together, it affords to teachers and supervisors alike a wealth of suggestion and help. The writer remembers visiting an exhibit of drawing and constructive work in one of our large cities. ”

“ And whether a picture be asserted at the date of its exhibition as advanced, or the contrary, as daring or dull, if it is born of the exhibition, it dies with the exhibition, and the brood to which it gives birth hold their life on the same tenure. ”

“ One has but to open the door to any forces of exhibition at all worthy of the name in order to see the imaging and qualifying agency called at once into play and put on its mettle. We may traverse acres of pretended exhibitory prose from which the touch that directly evokes and finely presents, the touch that operates for closeness and for charm, for conviction and illusion, for communication, in a word, is unsurpassably absent. ”

“ Through this atmosphere of torrid splendour moved wan beings as richly upholstered as the furniture, beings without definite pursuits or permanent relations, who drifted on a languid tide of curiosity from restaurant to concert-hall, from palm-garden to music-room, from "art exhibit" to dress-maker's opening. ”

“ July 26th.—Day before yesterday we went to the Arts' Exhibition, of which I do not think that I have a great deal to say. The edifice, being built more for convenience than show, appears better in the interior than from without,—long vaulted vistas, lighted from above, extending far away, all hung with pictures; and, on the floor below, statues, knights in armor, cabinets, vases, and all manner of curious and beautiful things, in a regular arrangement. ”

“ An exhibition is a mute world of a brilliant-hued medley of times, customs, and passions, petrified as if by some magic, and imprisoned in frames, condemned to remain motionless in the attitude assumed at the moment when the spell began to work. ”

“ Those who are now to be found there, however, have come to look at the Exhibition, and not to make an exhibition of themselves. There is no air of display about them—no social falsity—all is the plain unvarnished truth. ”

“ Observe a man at a picture exhibition—a man who begins at number one on the catalogue and goes right through with solemn persistence until he arrives at the longest number at the last page, and the uttermost corner of the last gallery. ”

“ Now, the Great Exhibition, looked at in its true light, is, we say once more, a huge academy for teaching men the laws of the material universe, by demonstrating the various triumphs of the useful arts over external nature. ”

“ At the Paris Exhibition of 1889 a Practical Guide was produced for the benefit of the English visitor, which is written throughout in the most astonishing jargon, as may be seen from the opening sentences of the ``Note of the Editor,'' which run as follows: ``The Universal Exhibition, for whom who comes there for the first time, is a true chaos in which it is impossible to direct and recognize one's self without a guide. ”

“ The Great Exhibition constitutes the one absorbing topic in which, for the time being, all other topics are merged. Go where you will, nothing else is thought of, talked of, or heard of, from one end of London to the other—this magnificent display of the achievements of art and industry forms the sole theme of conversation, calling forth the most animated descriptions, the most energetic discussions, the warmest and most enthusiastic praise. ”

“ The only exhibition that ever made, or ever will make, any impression upon my imagination was the first of the series, the parent of them all, and now a thing of old times-the Great Exhibition of 1851, in Hyde Park, London. None of the younger generation can realize the sense of novelty it produced in us who were then in our prime. A noun substantive went so far as to become an adjective in honour of the occasion. ”

“ An exhibition is at best a compromise, a convenience, a means of comparison, and to enable work to be shown to the public; but of course is, after all, only really and properly exhibited when it is in the place and position and light for which it was destined. ”

“ You feel this charged atmosphere at once at an art exhibition. You walk softly, you speak low, and you endeavour to become as intelligent as possible. Art exhibitions, in short, present various features indigenous to themselves which, so far as I am aware, have not before been adequately commented upon. ”

“ In a word, every possible effort will be exerted to place the Illustrated Catalogue of the Exhibition of 1862 among the most remarkable, excellent, and permanently useful productions which that Exhibition will call into existence, as the Illustrated Catalogue of 1851 undoubtedly was, in reference to the Exhibition of that memorable year. ”

“ There is a great deal of freedom in the Exhibition. The servant who walks behind his mistress through the Park feels that he can crowd against her in the Exhibition. The Queen and the day labourer, the Prince and the merchant, the peer and the pauper, the Celt and the Saxon, the Greek and the Frank, the Hebrew and the Russ, all meet here upon terms of perfect equality. ”

“ And it follows from this that galleries, as a rule, if we are not already able to connect with each picture our knowledge of the country, period, school, and master to which it belongs, is simply a collection without meaning, in which we lose ourselves. The most profitable arrangement for study and enjoyment with our eyes is therefore an exhibition based on historical sequence. ”

“ When The Fine Art Society’s Exhibition was first planned the intention was to confine it to samplers, which, in themselves, formed a class sufficiently large to occupy all the space which experience showed should be allotted to them in any display with which it was not desired to weary the visitor. ”

“ In connection with the Exhibition, then, we may anticipate any advance which belongs to the lower of the two methods; whereas the higher occurs in the ripeness of time and of men's wits, in complete independence of Exhibitions, and usually of any kind of consultation or demonstration. ”

“ In this recent art exhibition the lunatic fringe was fully in evidence, especially in the rooms devoted to the Cubists and the Futurists, or Near-Impressionists. ”

“ The Exhibition has been frequently consulted as an authority upon innumerable historical subjects, especially with regard to matters dealing with portraiture, biography, and costume, and many of the questions submitted might well have puzzled even the compiler of an encyclopædia. Queries are almost always coupled with an urgent request for immediate reply. ”

“ There are men who go about London, and levy contributions on the charitable, by falling down apparently into fits. They fill their mouths with some preparation, probably of the nature of soap, in order to produce foam; and really, until you know that the exhibition is a mere trick, it is one of the most appalling nature. One of the professors of this mystery I remember to have seen busy in the exercise of his profession close to the National Gallery. ”

“ But the discoverer, who works without any regard to Exhibitions, annihilates the old way by introducing a substitute—a something quite new, and infinitely superior. If there had been such an Exhibition a generation or two earlier, we might have owed to it a great improvement in the construction of street lamps—in the size and form of the wick, the application of the oil, and the construction of the glass case. ”

“ The wholesale exhibition of one class of objects leads to two things: a false impression on the part of the public as to the importance of that particular thing in the daily life of the people of ancient times, and a fatigue of mind and eye which must be avoided if the public is to benefit from the collection. To the great mass of museum visitors the exact position of a handle on a cup or the precise number of geometrical figures used in a design are of no possible interest. ”

“ An exhibition, as I have already insisted, is but a small part of the Arts & Crafts movement, which is a movement in the main of ideas and not of objets d'art, & there is a danger in the constant repetition of exhibitions, civic, national, and international, of public attention being diverted from the movement of ideas, & action thereupon, to the mere production and exhibition of exhibits. ”

“ Between 1851 and 1862, some vast additions have been made to the machinery of our civilisation,—any one of which fills a larger space in our minds and our lives than any practical result of the Exhibition. ”

“ If one wishes to form an idea of the vast numbers of indifferent paintings which are annually produced in England, he should visit, as I did, another exhibition, a large gallery lighted from above, in which each artist, most of them of the younger or obscurer class, takes a certain number of feet on the wall and exhibits just what he pleases. Every man is his own hanging committee, and if his pictures are not placed in the most advantageous position, it is his own fault. ”

“ To-day every exhibition shows an increasing number of worthy efforts at figure-painting in either the naturalistic or the ideal vein. We have pictures with subjects intelligently chosen and intelligibly treated, pictures with a pattern and a clear arrangement of line and mass, pictures soundly drawn and harmoniously colored as well as admirably painted. ”

“ Our firm has arrived at the dignity of exhibition at the great exhibition, where we have already sent some stained glass, and shall shortly send some furniture which will doubtless cause the majority of spectators to admire. The getting ready of our things first has cost more tribulation and swearing to Topsy than three exhibitions will be worth. ”

“ The placard goes on to describe the Exhibition as follows:
The Exhibition consists of a great variety of Public Characters, modelled with the greatest care, and regardless of expense, among whom will be noticed the original figures of BURKE and HARE (taken from their faces, to obtain which the Proprietors went expressly to Scotland) ; which have excited intense interest from the peculiar nature of their crimes, and their approach to life, which renders it difficult to recognize them from living persons. ”

“ Goode's suggestion that a museum should consist of a collection of labels illustrated by specimens, the curator has striven "to build up the exhibition series on the plan of a profusely illustrated text-book, in which the specimens themselves form the illustrations, and the text is furnished by the labels." ”

“ Suppose, for example, that an art gallery is devoted to an exhibition illustrative of some great historical subject, like the career of Napoleon I. The value of the pictorial side of the subject at once stands forth with great prominence, and one can realize the educational value of art in the exposition of history. ”

“ These and many other such quips made up an exhibition that amused people quite as much as the display of real relics edified them.
The preparation of all these features meant a great deal of hard work, but it was the sort of work made light by many hands, and so it was enjoyed by all who engaged in it. ”

“ The arrangement of groups for the exhibition cases of museums is very exacting as they are made open to the view on all sides. In order to judge of the affect such groups are modelled in miniature clay figures which are changed and re-arranged until satisfactory before the mounting is begun. ”

“ The spectacle was so new that it made a considerable impression upon the public, and the favourable reception these works experienced impressed the artists with an idea of forming a public exhibition, which scheme was carried into full effect with the help of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, who lent their great room for the purpose. ”

“ The Ethnological Gallery of the British Museum is one of the finest instructors. The silent exhibits tell the observant man or woman, boy or girl, much that cannot be learned from book knowledge. In the cases in that gallery are many objects fashioned by peoples who until recently were in their Stone Age, and had no knowledge of the outer world. ”

“ You used to say that the gallery was the best place of all for enjoying a play socially,—that the relish of such exhibitions must be in proportion to the infrequency of going,—that the company we met there, not being in general readers of plays, were obliged to attend the more, and did attend, to what was going on on the stage, because a word lost would have been a chasm which it was impossible for them to fill up. ”

“ It is believed that no important or interesting object in connexion with the Exhibition is without its record in this little volume; although, in so vast a collection of works of architecture, sculpture, and industrial manufacture, it is clearly impossible to compress within the limits of a General Hand-book all the information which is necessary to satisfy the visitor desirous of precise and accurate knowledge of the numberless objects offered to his contemplation. ”

“ In a museum, instruction as well as amusement should be aimed at, and museums on a comparatively small scale, by taking up some special branch, and illustrating it by a fairly complete and representative group of objects, may provide much useful information in a very agreeable form. The exhibits should be so arranged that the visitor glancing over them, should, as it were, be forced to unconsciously acquire some general, although perhaps not very profound, knowledge of objects exhibited. ”

“ This exhibition gallery was designed not so much as a rival to the Academy, as to provide a place where could be collected the works of those men who did not care to make their appeal to the public through the medium of a large and heterogeneous exhibition. ”

“ Nothing is more frequently brought home to the student of modern painting than the truth that the work of the salonnier, the picture, that is, that is born of the exhibition and for the exhibition, wears its air of novelty and interest strictly for the season. ”