Future Exhibitions
Spring 2026 Street Life: the “Cries” Genre and the Global Topography of Selling Food
Fall 2026 Public Figures: Puppets, Politics, and “The Lecture on Heads”
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March 11 to August 21, 2026
Guest Curator Gillian Forrester Independent art historian, curator, and writer
The exhibition will explore the long-established genre of the “Cries,” or the representation of street vendors “crying” or broadcasting their wares. Celebrating both the visual and the acoustic aspects of urban life, and usually taking the form of prints, the “Cries” images showcased economic prosperity through representations of diverse occupations and products being sold in urban spaces.
The chronological scope of the exhibition is between 1711, when the first edition of Marcellus Laroon’s Cryes of the City of London was issued, and the publication of John Thomson’s Street Life in London in 1877. The focus is primarily on British print culture, with the majority of the works published in and featuring London, but the exhibition will include works in other media and will be transnational in scope. We plan to include works depicting vendors in Calcutta (present day Kolkata), the British Caribbean, Lima, New York, and Paris, and to consider how the “Cries” genre was developed into an ethnographic discourse as Britain expanded its imperial reach.
Although the “Cries” genre encapsulated vendors with a wide range of wares, we are focusing on works depicting vendors of foodstuffs, and researching the kinds of produce, dairy products, fish, meat and baked goods that were sold on the streets of cities at this period. The exhibition will investigate the proliferation of images of specific foods that had particular significance; one recurring trope is that of the milkmaid, an often-idealized figure that represented rural purity at a time when adulteration of milk was a major concern in Britain.
Until recently historians have assumed that Stevens’ heads were generic types rather than identifiable public figures. Yet careful study of hundreds of political prints, mezzotints, portraits, and other images produced in the 1760s offers compelling evidence of Stevens’ satirical targets and his deep knowledge of, and possible participation in, one of the era’s most intense culture wars. This conflict pitted the supporters of the Scottish Prime Minister John Stuart, the Third Earl of Bute (among them Wiliam Hogarth and Tobias Smollett) against those who viewed Bute as a corrupt and dangerous influence on King George III. The rapid proliferation of prints, publications, and performances by participants on both sides of the culture war trained the London public to identify the likenesses of its central players. Stevens could reliably trust that those who attended his Lecture would recognize the public figures he had sculpted in papier mâché, even if he refrained from naming them directly for fear of censorship or libel charges.
Public Figures: Puppets, Politics, and “The Lecture on Heads” aims to make what was obvious to eighteenth-century audiences legible to viewers today. Drawing on the extensive print collections of the Lewis Walpole Library, it traces the history and legacy of Stevens’ play, situating it within the entangled histories of satirical puppetry, caricature, print shop windows, political commentary, celebrity culture, and more. Short videos and interactive displays also invite attendees to experience some of the performance genres that would have been familiar to eighteenth century audiences, and which continue to inform our relationship with current public figures.
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