Curator’s Talk: “SENSATION! Reported Bodies in 19th-Century American Media”

Please join us to celebrate the opening of “SENSATION! Reported Bodies in 19th-Century American Media,” the 2025 Senior Fellowship Exhibiton, view in the Sterling Library Exhibition Corridor from April 28 to September 28.

With this exhibition, Gross asks viewers to consider these questions: “How did old newspapers stimulate their readers’ sense organs? What visual and verbal strategies did they use to grab attention?”

Documents and images include Matthew Brady photographs of the Civil War, newspaper ads for “miracle” remedies, political cartoons from “Harper’s Weekly” and “Puck,” and shocking newspaper accounts of a New Haven murder. The exhibition features materials from several of Yale Library’s special collections—including Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Cushing/Whitney Medical Historical Library, and Robert F. Haas Family Arts Library. (Please note that this exhibition includes historical images of and references to sexual assault, lynching, and other acts of violence.)

Curator Anne Gross ’25 will provide a tour of this exciting exhibition and will be available for questions and conversation over light refreshments afterwards.

No registration is necessary.

An online version of the exhibition is also available.