Spectacles

Bartolomeo di Giovanni
Arrival of Thetis with Cortège of Honor
ca. 1475-1500
tempera on panel
Musée du Louvre

Alfred Edward Chalon
The Opera Box
1838
watercolor on paper
British Museum

Charles Cottet
Box at the Opéra Comique
1887
oil on panel
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Julia Margaret Cameron
Queen Guinevere (Tennyson)
1874
albumen silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Imogen Cunningham
Martha Graham
1931
gelatin silver print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Valérie Belin
Michael Jackson #1
2003
gelatin silver print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Chim (David Seymour)
Good Friday Procession, Sicily
1955
gelatin silver print
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Achenbach Foundation)

Eugène Atget
Carrousel
1923
gelatin silver print from glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Camille Bombois
Before entering the Ring
ca. 1930-35
oil on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Enrique Atalaya González
Circus Scene
ca. 1890
oil on panel
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Paul Colin
Serge Lifar
1935
lithograph (poster)
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Léon Bakst
Stage Costume
1928
offset-lithograph
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, New York

Charles Demuth
Dancing Sailors
1918
watercolor on paper
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Anonymous Photographer
Publicity Image of Young Hollywood Screen Actors
1939
gelatin silver print
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Achenbach Foundation)

Anonymous Photographer
Pierrot mécanique gymnaste
ca. 1906
gelatin silver print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Anonymous Photographer
June Vincent and Alan Curtis during Screen Test
ca. 1945
C-print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Gregory Crewdson
Untitled
2005
C-print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Magna est Veritas

Here, in this little Bay,

Full of tumultuous life and great repose,

Where, twice a day,

The purposeless, glad ocean comes and goes,

Under high cliffs, and far from the huge town,

I sit me down.

For want of me the world's course will not fail;

When all its work is done, the lie shall rot;

The truth is great, and shall prevail,

When none cares whether it prevail or not.

– Coventry Patmore (1823-1896)