Seminars, Workshops & Panel Discussions

A well-dressed crowd stand outside, enter, or struggle to enter a wide doorway, Broadsides announcing the exhibition are posted on the exterior wall above which in large letters is No 5, flanking an elaborate fan-light. They mount steps from the street, throng the vestibule, and are seen through an open window (right) ascending a staircase. A man in the vestibule shouts.

Workshop: “Seen with great delight”: Spectacle in Georgian London

June 5 & 6, 2025

at the Lewis Walpole Library and Yale Center for British Art

Led by Alison FitzGerald, Maynooth University

Contributing participants:

Al Coppola, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY

John Plunkett, University of Exeter

Robbie Richardson, Princeton University

Catherine Roach, Virginia Commonwealth University

David Taylor, St. Hugh’s College, University of Oxford

The Lewis Walpole Library has organized a workshop on 5 & 6 June 2025, in connection with the library’s current exhibition “Seen with great delight”: Spectacle in Georgian London. Drawing on Samuel Johnson’s definition of spectacle as “a show; a gazing stock; any thing exhibited to the view as eminently remarkable,” the workshop will consider the range of shows presented to the fee-paying public in Georgian London, from displays of art and mechanical ingenuity to scientific experiments and wondrous beings, and will further examine how spectacle blurred the line between high and low culture, fine art, and performance.

Each invited participant will speak about an object, or a few objects, selected from the special collections at the Lewis Walpole Library, either drawn from the exhibition or from the collection more generally.  The works selected will be available for close viewing in the reading room before presentations, and PowerPoint projection will enable sharing collections images during each talk as well as to provide an opportunity to present comparative material from elsewhere. Ample time for discussions following the presentations will follow.

The workshop will take place on Thursday June 5th in the Lewis Walpole Library’s reading room in Farmington, and on June 6th, we will head to the Study Room at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven.

The workshop is open to a small number of students and fellows by application. 

Apply for this workshop