Closed for the off season, will reopen on May 10!
Eyeglasses are everywhere today. Corrective lenses help countless people perceive the world with increased precision, and sunglasses defend eyes from the glare of a bright day. While the development of spectacles goes back centuries, however, the earliest optical aids were often imprecise or prohibitively expensive. Over time, new technologies and consumer markets have yielded many different kinds of eyewear to serve a variety of purposes: correcting and protecting vision, expressing individual identity, and informing our impressions of each other.
Eyesight & Insight: Lens on American Art highlights themes ranging from early optical technologies to the cultural and historical connotations of eyeglasses in American art and material culture. It illuminates the myriad roles that spectacles play while providing new perspectives on how artists have negotiated issues related to sight. Covering more than two centuries of fine art, design, and scientific innovation this exhibition encourages visitors to consider how artists use these versatile everyday objects as tools for revealing sociopolitical issues, exposing or disguising identity, and eliciting humor.
Attributed to Ammi Phillips (American, 1788–1865)
Portrait of a Quaker Woman, 1835–45
Oil on canvas
Collection of Shelburne Museum, Gift of James and Susan Wanner, 2002-32
Born in northwestern Connecticut, Ammi Phillips painted portraits in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York from about 1811 until the 1860s. By the 1840s, Phillips was living in Dutchess County, New York, where Quakers had settled as early as the mid-18th century.
The sitter in this portrait, identified as a “Quaker Woman” by the painting’s original owner, wears clothing that is indeed traditionally associated with the Society of Friends, the formal name for the Quakers. Her neckerchief, transparent shawl, and tightly fitted cap with a broad brim were typical of the plain attire adopted by Quaker women, identifying them as members of the Protestant Christian sect. The Society of Friends took great pride in educating young women, a progressive notion for the mid-19th century. While images of the Bible were included in many 19th-century portraits, its presence in this composition—combined with the subject’s corrective lenses—likely alludes to the sitter’s literacy.
Rembrandt Peale (American, 1778–1860)
Rubens Peale with a Geranium, 1801
Oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Patrons’ Permanent Fund, 1985.59.1
Charles Willson Peale named most of his 17 children after well-known scientists and artists. Both Rubens, the subject of this portrait, and his brother Rembrandt, this portrait’s maker, were artists and museum keepers, but picture highlights another of Rubens’ lifelong interests: botany. Close study of the natural world required keen eyesight, and the two pairs of glasses visible in this portrait served two different purposes. The set Rubens clasps in his hands has oval lenses and a wider bridge; these were meant to rest low on Rubens’ nose and create a magnifying effect. They would have helped him to examine botanical specimens like this geranium, reputed to be the first one ever grown in North America. The glasses on Rubens’ face, resting higher on his nose, are meant for long vision and looking out toward the world.
Charles Willson Peale (American, 1741–1827)
Self-Portrait with Spectacles, ca. 1804
Oil on canvas, mounted on wood
Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Philadelphia, Henry D. Gilpin Fund
With the notable exception of Benjamin Franklin, there are very few portraits of individuals wearing glasses in North America from the time before and during the American Revolution. Like Franklin, Charles Willson Peale was interested in the technological advancements of his era; he was variously described as inventor, archaeologist, museum founder, naturalist, watchmaker, statesman, autobiographer, and unconventional portraitist. Peale completed nearly a dozen self-portraits during his lifetime, yet his Self-Portrait with Spectacles is the only one to prominently feature the painter wearing eyeglasses. The faint horizontal lines in the lenses indicate that they are likely bifocals of the sort developed by Franklin. Further, the position of these spectacles on Peale’s forehead indicates that the artist has taken a break from his work, pushing his glasses up off of his face to look outward and better connect with the viewer.
Charles Willson Peale (American, 1741–1827)
Benjamin Franklin, 1785
Oil on canvas
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Bequest of Mrs. Sarah Harrison (The Joseph Harrison Jr. Collection)
Benjamin Franklin has long been credited with the development of lenses that allowed users to see objects both nearby and at a distance. In a 1784 letter to his “Dear Old Friend” George Whatley, Franklin remarked that he was “happy in the invention of Double Spectacles, which serving for distant objects as well as near ones, make my Eyes as useful to me as ever they were: If all the other Defects and Infirmities were as easily and Cheaply remedied, it would be worth while for Friends to live a good deal longer.” “Double spectacles”—today better known as bifocals or progressive lenses—are commonplace in the 21st century, helping scores of individuals see the world more clearly.
Benjamin Franklin (American, 1706–90)
Correspondence with George Whatley, May 23, 1785
Manuscript/mixed material
Benjamin Franklin Papers: Series II, 1726–1818, vol. 22, 1784–85
Retrieved from the Library of Congress. www.loc.gov/item/mss21451024/
Partial Transcription of Benjamin Franklin’s Journal:
“I therefore had formerly two Pair of Spectacles, which I shifted occasionally, as in travelling I sometimes read, and often wanted to regard the Prospects. Finding this Change troublesome, and not always sufficiently ready, I had the Glasses cut, and half of each kind associated in the same Circle.”
Unidentified maker (Gobles, Michigan)
Anniversary Tin: Men’s Top Hat and Spectacles, 1880–1900
Tin
American Folk Art Museum, Gift of Martin and Enid Packard, 1988.25.1, 2
Tin whimsies were intended as humorous souvenirs for 10th wedding anniversaries, which received significant attention during the 19th century. With illness, childbirth, and accidents curtailing the average lifespan, the 10th wedding anniversary (for which the traditional gift is tin) was considered an important marital milestone and was commemorated through lighthearted celebrations called tin wedding parties. Invitations were usually printed on tin or on paper decorated with tin, and guests would present the couple with gifts of tin. These gifts might be commissioned from a local tinsmith and were relatively inexpensive to make. Many were exaggerated versions of everyday objects, such as oversized hats or shoes, but they could also be tailored to the couple’s personalities or idiosyncrasies.
Howardena Pindell (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, b. 1943– )
Free, White and 21, 1980
Single-channel video (color, sound, 12:15 min.)
Courtesy the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York
Over Howardena Pindell’s prolific career, she has held the role of artist, curator, critic, activist, and educator. Born in Philadelphia in 1943, Pindell grew up experiencing segregation, and early in life she found art as a refuge. After moving to New York City in 1967, Pindell found success exhibiting her multimedia abstract paintings, joined the Museum of Modern Art as one of their first Black curators, and became a founding member of A.I.R. Gallery, the nation’s first all-female artist cooperative gallery. In 1979, two events forever shaped the artist: her final disillusionment with the art world’s systemic racism and a car accident that left her with serious injuries, including memory loss.
Inspired by the defining events of that pivotal year, Pindell created her first video work, Free, White and 21, as a way of regaining identity through recovered memories and exposing what she described as “yet another run-in with racism in the art world and the white feminists.” Pindell appears as several characters in a dialogue revealing the frustrations of Black women in dealing with ignorance during a discussion of racism and gender issues. Pindell appears as herself, as a Black artist, and as a Black everywoman recounting recalled memories and testimonials about racism. In “conversation” with and verbally assaulting her is a white feminist woman, also played by Pindell, who minimizes and refutes the other women’s experiences and statements. The whiteface makeup, blonde wig, and cat’s-eye sunglasses indemnify the woman’s race, gender, and class while providing some strategic anonymity; however, the sunglasses do little to conceal or mask her racism. The costuming is deliberately campy and imperfect, a caricature of white feminism that demonstrates how race is socially constructed. Elsewhere in the film, Pindell adopts separate roles employing masks—wrapping gauze bandages around her head, peeling transparent “skin” from her face, and, as the the white woman, pulling a white stocking over her head—meant to mock racial binaries and efforts over time to silence and ignore people of color.
Pindell’s video exposes inequalities between women, repurposing the title of a 1963 Hollywood film to reveal how different the average white woman’s position in society is from those of Black, Indigenous and people of color.
William Wegman (New York, New York, b. 1943– )
Funglasses, 1970
Two gelatin silver prints
Courtesy of the artist and Sperone Westwater, New York
William Wegman (New York, New York, b. 1943– )
Untitled, 1992
Color Polaroid
Courtesy of the artist and Sperone Westwater, New York
For over six decades William Wegman has moved fluidly between media—photography, painting, drawing, and video—working within both the fine art and commercial sectors. In 1970, Wegman emerged as a key figure in West Coast Conceptualism, a movement in which artists employed deadpan jokes and wordplay, valuing ideas over form. Wegman’s work from this period follows a sophisticated formula of existentialism, satire, and, at times, pure silliness.
Wegman has long been intrigued with “mirrors, palindromes, twins, and find-the-differences puzzles,” in his words, and has often incorporated these dualities into his work. Funglasses appears to represent a simple before/after scenario, insinuating that two pairs of stacked sunglasses are better than one.
Commissioned by The New York Times, Wegman’s Untitled Polaroid captures the American actor and writer Spalding Gray (1941–2004) who was promoting his autobiographical monologue film Gray’s Anatomy (1996). In the film, Gray’s character is diagnosed with an ocular condition that leaves him partly blind in one eye. Emulating partial clarity, Wegman captures the actor out of focus wearing an optometrist’s device and facing an in-focus eye chart, props loaned by science and technology collector Eli Buk (1949–2012).
Cindy Sherman (American, b. 1954– )
Untitled, 2016
Edition 6/6, 1 AP
Dye sublimation metal print
Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth© Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman’s photographic work, which largely consists of theatrical self-portraits, critiques social and cultural constructs of identity, gender issues, and representation. Transforming herself into different personas, she creates images that challenge the credibility of consumer culture, celebrity, and stereotypes. Forty years after her black-and-white series Untitled Film Stills (1977–80), she returned to the theme of cinema in Flappers (2016–18) a color series capturing fictional veteran actors from Hollywood’s “Golden Age.” Sherman embodies aging women who cling to their once-youthful and glamorous appearance through elaborate coiffures, fashionable wardrobes, painted cupid’s-bow lips, and thin arched eyebrows harking back to the styles of the 1920s. The clear motive of reclaiming a youthful appearance also reveals another ploy: hiding their authentic selves through surgical and cosmetic artifices. Despite these efforts, no amount of thickly applied makeup can conceal to the impact of time.
Here, the artist relies on digital technology to assume four different characters posed together for a staged group portrait, each clothed in a similar fashion and wearing a pair of circular eyeglasses. The glasses are emblematic of their age and diminishing eyesight but not necessarily revelatory of their identity—or, by extension, the artist’s, which is often internalized and unobservable. Sherman takes advantage of the fluidity between outer appearance and inner psychology throughout her oeuvre. While her work is not an exercise in self-portraiture per se, this series plays homage to Sherman’s own recognition of her advancing age while critiquing society’s obsession with youthful attractiveness. “To me, it’s a little scary when I see myself [in my work],” Sherman said. “And it’s especially scary when I see myself in these older women.”
Tseng Kwong Chi (American, born Hong Kong, 1950–1990)
San Francisco, CA, [Trans Am, TKC jumping], 1979
Vermont [Woodpile], 1983
Campfire, VT, 1983
Vermont [Schoolhouse], 1983
Niagara Falls, NY, 1984
Edition of 9
Gelatin silver prints from the series “East Meets West”
Private collection
While assuming the persona of a foreign Chinese dignitary for his East Meets West series, photographer and performer Tseng Kwong Chi described himself as an “ambiguous ambassador” and an “inquisitive traveler.” Although the artist adopted this role for his art, Tseng himself was also a curious observer and global citizen. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Vancouver, Canada, Tseng received his formal art education in Paris. In 1978, Tseng moved to Manhattan and soon became an active and vital participant in New York’s arts scene of the 1970s and 1980s. Tseng created a prolific body of work before his premature death from AIDS-related causes.
In 1979, Tseng began East Meets West, a series inspired by President Richard Nixon’s staged diplomatic trip to the People’s Republic of China in 1972. Created over ten years and extending across the globe, this innovative series combines performance and photography to address sociopolitical and identity issues in a satirical way. Through self-portraits, Tseng photographs himself wearing a Zhongshan suit—or “Mao suit”—an identification badge, and sunglasses, a costume that allowed him to simultaneously assimilate and stand out within different settings or spaces. While the outfit drew attention to Tseng’s ethnicity, it also provided him with mobility, based largely on others assuming he was a notable public figure or tourist and allowing him access to exclusive events and locations.
These five photographs provide a small sample of the artist’s extensive travels across the United States—including a visit to Vermont—and document his performance and investigation into “finding out what Americans worship in their country.” While visiting popular tourist sites and attractions, Tseng strategically placed himself in between the camera and his subject, often leaving visible his camera’s manual shutter release cable. In many of the photographs, his point of view is seen through a pair of highly reflective mirrored sunglasses. According to Tseng, the sunglasses not only provide some anonymity, but they also “give the picture a neutral impact and a surrealist quality I am looking for.”
Jamie Wyeth (American, b. 1946– )
Draft Age, 1965
Oil on canvas
Purchased with funds provided by Mr. and Mrs. Randy L. Christofferson; Mr. and Mrs. George Strawbridge, Jr.; Mary Alice Dorrance Malone Foundation; Margaret Dorrance Strawbridge Foundation of PA I, Inc.; The William Stamps Farish Fund; Mr. and Mrs. James W. Stewart, III; and MBNA America, 1999.
© Jamie Wyeth/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Completed in 1965 at the height of the Vietnam War, this portrait depicts Jimmy Lynch, a childhood friend of the artist’s. Jimmy’s gloves, leather jacket, and wraparound sunglasses give him an air of rebellion and youthful cockiness, echoing Marlon Brando’s character in László Benedek’s outlaw biker film The Wild One (1953). John Wilmerding has noted that Lynch’s sunglasses function in two ways, both obscuring the subject’s eyes and reflecting back at the viewer. Further complicating this object’s narrative, Lynch received his draft notice the day that this portrait was completed.
Duane Michals (American, b. 1932– )
Alice’s Mirror, 1974Edition 16/25
Six gelatin silver prints with hand-applied text
Courtesy of the artist and DC Moore Gallery, New York© 2021 Duane Michals
Spanning more than five decades, photographer Duane Michals’ vast body of work challenges the perception that the camera documents truth. Michals experiments with storytelling through highly staged photographs that use props and people not widely seen since the 19th century. Often using sequences of black-and-white photographs to suggest a narrative, incorporating handwritten text in the margins, or painting on the printed images, he creates images that blur the lines between fine art and social documentary photography. As a result, his images are simultaneously ordinary and otherworldly.
“The mysterious situations Michals invents are posed and theatrical,” wrote William Burback, curator of Michals’ first solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970. “Yet, they are so common to the urban condition that we have the illusion of remembering scenes and events experienced for the first time.”
In Alice’s Mirror, Michals presents a complex story using seven sequential images. Adapting formal techniques previously employed by Surrealists, the artist distorts scale, plays with reflections, and shifts points of view to create a storyboard where nothing is what it seems. In the first photograph, disproportionately large eyeglasses are staged near a tiny chair, introducing a myriad of optical and conceptual tricks incorporating lenses and glasses in order to play with perception. Much like the title character in Lewis Carroll’s fantastical book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, viewers are encouraged to question how each image informs the next. The artist’s goal is to not give away answers; he believes that “photographs should never pat us on the back and say ‘Yes that is a sunset, that’s beautiful.’ They should make us ask ‘what is going on there?’”
Richard Caton Woodville (American, 1825–55)
Waiting for the Stage, 1851
Oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund, William A. Clark Fund, and through the gifts of Mr. and Mrs. Lansdell K. Christie and Orme Wilson; Frame: Museum Purchase through the gifts of William Wilson Corcoran), 2014.79.36
Waiting for the Stage provides a window into a tavern, a common waiting space for stagecoaches. Gathered around a table are three men: two are engaged in a game of cards, while the third stands and ostensibly reads a newspaper. Two details about the standing figure—both the newspaper’s masthead which reads “THE SPY” and the figure’s dark glasses—indicate that there may be more going on in this picture than a simple card game. The standing figure’s dark glasses, while usually associated with blindness, conceal where he may actually be looking. Further, it is unclear whether the three men in the composition are actually traveling or just pretending to travel, complicating the narrative of a picture that is all about sight, deception, and the importance of a good poker face.
Edwin Romanzo Elmer (American, 1850–1923)
Magic Glasses, 1891
Oil on canvas
Collection of Shelburne Museum, Museum purchase, acquired from Richard Gipson, 1960-304.6
Magic Glasses, Edwin Romanzo Elmer’s only known still life in oil, is filled with illusionistic and detailed subject matter. A clear, footed vase (a “celery glass,” in the terminology of the time) sits on a marble tabletop. Balanced precariously on the rim of the vase is a magnifying glass whose convex lens offers viewers the reflection of a winter landscape out an unseen window. While ostensibly about two varieties of glasses, this painting also hints at Elmer’s engagement with emerging photographic technologies. The reflections in the painting are reminiscent of the camera obscura, a precursor to the modern camera. Further, the release of the Kodak camera in 1888—just three years before this picture was completed—had made photography widely available to Americans. Elmer reportedly took advantage of the new art form himself: a November 1904 exhibition review in the Greenfield Reporter noted, “Mr. Elmer makes a specialty of enlarging photographs for which he took many orders.”
George Cope (American, 1855–1929)
Spectacles, ca. 1900
Oil on board
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Frances and Joseph Nash Field Fund
Hailing from Pennsylvania’s Brandywine Valley, George Cope began painting trompe l’oeil (“fool the eye”) still lifes in the 1880s. This small picture’s simplicity highlights Cope’s technical abilities: the delicate metal frames and lenses convincingly cast a slightly elongated shadow on the otherwise empty background of the composition. The dimensionality of the forms encourages a second look, pushing viewers to ask if this is indeed a painted representation or a real pair of spectacles.
J. R. Eyerman (American, 1906–85)
Published in Life Magazine, December 15, 1952
Audience watches premiere of “Bwana Devil” wearing polaroid spectacles to enjoy the three dimensional sequences, Hollywood, CA, 1952
Gelatin silver print
Licensed by LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Premiering on November 26, 1952, Bwana Devil was the first color 3D movie, a major, feature-length motion picture that incorporated three-dimensional viewing. Using polarized light and the “Natural Vision” projection system, these films required audience members to wear Polaroid-filtered glasses to create the illusion as if the scenes were physically happening in the space in front of them. While advertising promised viewers the visual sensation of “a lion in your lap” and “a lover in your arms,” according to a Life magazine reporter, audiences found the 3D experience of Bwana Devil lackluster and complained that the glasses were uncomfortable. This striking photograph taken for Life captures the audience at the Los Angeles premiere reacting to the motion picture while wearing the 3D glasses that were provided. Despite the film’s poor overall reviews, Bwana Devil kicked off Hollywood’s and the American public’s longstanding enthusiasm for 3D vision.
Row 1 (top to bottom, left to right)
Seneca Ray Stoddard (Glens Falls, New York, 1844–1917)
Lake Placid, Adirondacks, from “Crystal” Series, date unknown
Stereograph
Collection of Shelburne Museum, Gift of Mrs. Edith Hoplins Walker, 1958-229.44
Published by William H. Rau (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1855–1920)
Sold by Universal View Company (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1890’s-1900’s)
Washington Monument (reflected). Washington, D.C., date unknown
Stereograph
Collection of Shelburne Museum, Gift of Mr. R.L. Randall, 1960-15.8
William H. Rau (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1855–1920)
Angora Kids at the Spring On a Kansas Goat Ranch, 1903
Stereograph
Collection of Shelburne Museum, Gift of Mr. R.L. Randall, 1960-15.7
Unidentified maker
East River Bridge Towers, from “America Illustrated Stereographs of New York City” Series, 1867–1910
Stereograph
Collection of Shelburne Museum, Gift of Mr. R.L. Randall, 1960-15.4
Row 2 (top to bottom, left to right)
Published by William H. Rau (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1855–1920)
Sold by Universal View Company (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1890’s-1900’s)
Lake Tahoe, California, date unknown
Stereograph
Collection of Shelburne Museum, Gift of Mr. R.L. Randall, 1960-15.6
Unidentified maker
The Interior of the U.S. Capitol, from “American Scenery Tourists Series,” date unknown
Stereograph and paint
Collection of Shelburne Museum, 27.12.4-34
George E. Curtis (Niagara Falls, New York, 1830–1910)
American Fall from Canada, from “Niagara Falls, N.Y.” Series, date unknown
Stereograph
Collection of Shelburne Museum, 27.12.4-9
James Cremer (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1821–93)
“Old Liberty Bell,” 1776, 1860-1882
Stereograph
Collection of Shelburne Museum, 27.12.4-54
Row 3 (top to bottom, left to right)
Kilburn Brothers Stereoscopic View Company (Littleton, New Hampshire, 1865–1910)
South Dome, Yosemite, California, date unknown
Stereograph
Collection of Shelburne Museum, 27.12.4-22
Unidentified maker
Montpelier State House, 1860-1880
Stereograph
Collection of Shelburne Museum, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. M.C. Twitchell, 1981-70.17
Charles Bierstadt (Niagara Falls, New York, 1819–1903)
Horse Shoe Falls from under Table Rock, Niagara N.Y., from “Niagara Falls, N.Y.” Series, date unknown
Stereograph
Collection of Shelburne Museum, 27.12.4-41
Seneca Ray Stoddard (Glens Falls, New York, 1844–1917)
John Brown’s Grave, at North Elba, from “Crystal” Series, ca. 1888
Stereograph
Collection of Shelburne Museum, Gift of Mrs. Edith Hoplins Walker, 1958-229.43
Row 4 (top to bottom, left to right)
Unidentified maker
1000 Mile Tree, from “Union Pacific R.R. West from Omaha” Series, date unknown
Stereograph
Collection of Shelburne Museum, Gift of Mr. R.L. Randall, 1960-15.5
Unidentified maker
Main Street (Looking North) Vergennes, Vermont, date unknown
Stereograph
Collection of Shelburne Museum, Gift of Mr. R.L. Randall, 1960-15.10
Baker & Record (American, active 1870s)
Champion Spring in Winter, from “Saratoga Springs, N.Y.” Series, date unknown
Stereograph
Collection of Shelburne Museum, Collection of Shelburne Museum, 27.12.4-20
Josiah Freeman (American, active Nantucket, 1867–92)
Nantucket, date unknown
Stereograph
Collection of Shelburne Museum, Collection of Shelburne Museum, 27.12.4-40
Row 5 (top to bottom, left to right)
Kilburn Brothers Stereoscopic View Company (Littleton, New Hampshire, 1865–1910)
Jacob’s Ladder, Mt. Washington Railroad, date unknown
Stereograph
Collection of Shelburne Museum, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. M.C. Twitchell, 1981-70.47
Photography by George Barker (Niagara Falls, New York, 1844–94)
Published by Strohmeyer & Wyman (New York, New York, active 1890s)
Sold by Underwood & Underwood (Ottawa, Kansas, 1881–1940s)
The Old Hunter’s Cosy Camp—In a Log, 1893
Stereograph
Collection of Shelburne Museum, Gift of Mrs. Hubert J. Soule, 1956-613.7
Franklin George Weller (Littleton, New Hampshire, 1833–1877)
Come Along, Do!, from “Stereorscopic Treasures” Series, 1872
Stereograph
Collection of Shelburne Museum, Gift of Mrs. H. J. Soule, 1956-613.8
Published by William H. Rau (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1855–1920)
Sold by Universal View Company (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1890’s-1900’s)
“Reliance,” Proud Defender of America’s Cup Crossing Line Winner, 1903
Stereograph
Collection of Shelburne Museum, Gift of Mr. R.L. Randall, 1960-15.9
The printed double images above are examples of late 19th- and early 20th-century stereograph views that could be inserted into a viewing device like the hand-held Perfecsope in the nearby case.
H.C. White Co. (North Bennington, Vermont, 1870-ca. 1935)
The “Perfecsope,” ca. 1900
Metal, wood, and glass
Collection of Shelburne Museum, Museum purchase, 1949-117.73
George Baldwin (Keeseville, New York, 1849–1930)
Ausable Chasm—Cathedral Rocks, from Short Gallery, from “Gems of the Adirondacks” Series, date unknown
Stereograph
Collection of Shelburne Museum, Gift of Mr. R.L. Randall, 1960-15.3
Invented in the 1830s and popular as an entertainment medium from the 1850s to the 1930s, stereoscopes are viewing devices that allow a user to see two near-identical two-dimensional images as a single three-dimensional image. The user would grasp the vertical, contoured handle of the device and hold its curved, mask-like portion against their forehead while gazing simultaneously through the right and left lenses. A printed card with two images taken from slightly different angles slid into the metal guide wires in front of the lenses. These images combined in the user’s vision to create a single picture that created the illusion of three dimensions. Image themes included humor, politics, science, fictional stories, and more. When the stereoscope fell out of favor in the 20th century, new devices with integrated full-color viewing cards, like the View-Master, recreated the experience for subsequent generations.
Snap, Inc. (Santa Monica, California, est. 2011)
Spectacles 3, 2019
Smartglasses with cardboard companion 3D viewer
Museum purchase, Exhibition Use 119
These sunglasses—Snapchat’s Spectacles 3—are among many technological products available today that let wearers capture moments from their direct points of view. For several years, designers and technology companies have been developing “smart glasses” and other optical, head-mounted displays fashionably designed into a pair of glasses. First publicly announced in 2016, Snapchat’s Spectacles have built-in cameras and microphones that record short videos and capture photographs, including three-dimensional and augmented-reality images. Spectacles 3 is the company’s third generation of smart glasses, released in 2019. Contemporary in style, the metal-framed sunglasses replicate 19th-century stereoscopes with their two high-definition cameras. They are packaged with a 3D viewer that lets viewers experience a memory through stereoscopic viewing.
Ernst Plank Company (Germany, 1866–1935)
Magic Lantern and Hand-painted Lantern Slides, ca. 1885
Metal, wood, paint, and glass
Collection of Shelburne Museum, Gift of Todd Whitaker, 1988-12a-c
Founded in Nuremburg, Germany, in 1866, the Ernst Plank Company manufactured a variety of metal goods, ranging from toy steam locomotives to early photography equipment. One of their most successful products was a magic lantern, a kind of projector that used a light source, a lens, and illustrated glass slides to project enlarged images onto a wall or into a space. First developed in the 17th century, these devices were widely used from the 18th to the mid-20th century and were eventually superseded by projectors that used electricity and film slides. Common projection themes included folklore, history, science, travel, and art. Sometimes these devices were also used for a form of horror theater known as a “phantasmagoria” that employed one or more magic lanterns to project visions of spirits or ghosts for adventurous audiences.
Brian Collier (Hinesburg, Vermont, b. 1970- ) in collaboration with Alex Collier (Hinesburg, Vermont, b. 2012- ) and Max Collier (Hinesburg, Vermont, b. 2012- )
Myra Flynn (Shelburne, Vermont, b. 1984- ) in collaboration with Avalon Wills (Shelburne, Vermont, b. 2019- )
Sarah Frechette (South Hero, Vermont, b. 1979– )
Lydia Kern (Burlington, Vermont, b. 1992- )
“Spectacles at Shelburne Museum,” 2021
3D videos captured with Snap, Inc., Spectacles 3 smartglasses
Courtesy of the artists
In the fall of 2021, four multidisciplinary Vermont artists captured their experience at Shelburne Museum, exploring its gardens, buildings, and collections through their distinct perspectives. Supplied with Snapchat’s Spectacles 3, the participating artists recorded ten-second videos capturing their direct lines of sight simply by pushing a button located on the earpieces.
In this selection of videos, environmental artist Brian Collier and his twin sons, Alex and Max; singer-songwriter Myra Flynn and her daughter, Avalon; puppeteer Sarah Frechette; and sculpture and installation artist Lydia Kern take viewers on a tour of the Museum through their points of view. Their short, unedited videos capture the artists authentically moving through and engaging with the Museum, illustrating their and their families’ creative interests, interpretations, and insights.
Unidentified maker
H. L. Adams Optician’s Trade Sign, date unknown
Painted iron
Collection of Shelburne Museum, Gift of Roger Wentworth, 1964-64
Shelburne Museum founder Electra Havemeyer Webb was one of the earliest collectors of American folk art. The most engaging forms often combined a lively graphic sensibility with a strong sense of everyday practicality. Accordingly, the Museum’s collection of trade signs includes easily identifiable oversized forms like a milliner’s top hat, cobbler’s boots and shoes, a jeweler’s pocket watch, a pharmacist’s mortar and pestle, a locksmith’s skeleton key, and more. This factory-made sign, individualized with the optician’s name, used to hang in Manchester Center, Vermont.
Unidentified maker
Spectacle-Optometrist’s Trade Sign, 1867–1900
Wood, paint, glass, and iron
Collection of Shelburne Museum, Museum purchase, 1947, 1961-1.36
Trade signs by usually anonymous 19th-century carvers and painters function as both practical and visually witty sculptural objects. By necessity, many of these forms were larger than life and intended to hang over shop or office doors, indicating the types of merchandise or professional services offered within. As legible at a distance as it is close up, the unmistakable meaning of this large, carved wood pair of spectacles would have been clear passersby no matter their vision or ability to read.