June 3, 2025

Curated by Alison Fitzgerald, Maynooth University, the exhibition primarily focuses on images drawn from the LWL’s extensive collections that announce, depict and satirise what people paid to gaze at. Who ultimately judged what was “eminently remarkable” in an unashamedly commercial context? At the heart of this equation were the spectators, united by the impulse of curiosity but far from homogenous, and at times, making a spectacle of themselves.