The Image Affair

Dreyfus in the Media, 1894-1906
  • Conversation & Beitler Lecture
Animation showing Zola intermittently mooning the viewer. "Mon coeur a Dreyfus" is lettered on his naked backside.
Image: Zola-Mouquette (Paris: Léon Hayard, ca. 1899). Anti-Dreyfusard card with movable panel, ridiculing Émile Zola as defender of Alfred Dreyfus, likely produced during the time of Zola's trial (Dreyfus Collection DC354.9.Z65)

On exhibit April 13 - September 4, 2015

The Image Affair: Dreyfus in the Media, 1894-1906 examines the infamous wrongful conviction for treason, and eventual exoneration, of Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus as it played out in the French media at the turn of the last century. This exhibition traces the greatest scandal of fin-de-siècle France through the diverse body of images that proliferated in a country divided by anti-semitism, nationalistic fervor, juridical malpractice, and military misconduct. Encompassing the full range of the period's print culture including the illustrated press, broadsheets, photography, postcards, films and even board games, the exhibition draws almost entirely from the Lorraine Beitler Collection of the Dreyfus Affair at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the largest such collections in the world. The images and objects assembled represent a range of opposing viewpoints from the Dreyfusard and Anti-Dreyfusard camps—at turns documentary and satirical, hateful and humorous. The Image Affair encourages a critical examination of an event that engaged and galvanized French and international publics alike, emphasizing the key role that new media technologies played in its unfolding.
 
Exhibition Catalog
A full-color illustrated catalog contains expanded essays on each section of the exhibition. Winner of the 2016 RBMS Leab Exhibition Award (Division Two)
 
“This catalog takes an innovative approach to an historical event by examining it through the visual culture that surrounded it. The committee acknowledged the very high quality of scholarly production including apparatus such as a chronology and a selected bibliography. The catalog has high production values with the detailed bibliographic entries being divided into compelling categories. It also displays subtle but beautiful and unifying graphic design elements. Finally, the committee felt it significant that such an excellent catalog was the result of a student-curated exhibition.”
8.5"x11", paper cover with French flaps, 132 pages, (available here).

The exhibition and related events are sponsored by the Penn Art History Curatorial Seminar Fund, the Lorraine Beitler Lecture Fund, and the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts.

Kamin Gallery
Van Pelt-Dietrich Library, first floor
3420 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA
Gallery hours: Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm
Saturday and Sunday, by prior arrangement (215.898.7088 or kislak@pobox.upenn.edu)
Free and open to the public (please show photo ID at entrance).

2015 Lorraine Beitler Lecture
Tuesday, April 21, 2015

The Image Affair: Dreyfus in the Media, 1894-1906

Conversation & lecture

The Image Affair encourages a critical examination of an event that engaged and galvanized French and international publics alike, emphasizing the key role that new media technologies played in its unfolding.

  • Conversation

    1:30-3:00 PM: Public conversation between Lorraine Beitler and Norman L. Kleeblatt
    Kislak Center Room 627, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library

    Conversation about collecting and curating the sensitive visual material related to the Dreyfus Affair between Lorraine Beitler (Ed.D., collector/curator, The Lorraine Beitler Collection of the Dreyfus Affair at UPenn) and Norman L. Kleeblatt (Susan and Elihu Rose Chief Curator, The Jewish Museum, New York, and curator of the 1987 exhibition The Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth, and Justice).

     

    3:00-4:00 PM: Coffee break and exhibition viewing

     

  • Lecture

    4:00-6:00 PM: 2015 Lorraine Beitler Lecture
    "Art, Print Culture, and Radical Politics, c. 1900"—A Symposium
    Class of 1978 Orrery Pavilion, Kislak Center, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library

    A Symposium with Vanessa R. Schwartz, Professor of History, Art History and Critical Studies, University of Southern California, and S. Hollis Clayson, Professor of Art History and Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities, Northwestern University.

     

    6:00-7:00 PM: Public reception
    Kamin Gallery, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library, first floor

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