Living Pictures, Missing Persons: Mannequins, Museums, and Modernity

In the late-19th century, Scandinavian urban dwellers developed a passion for a new, modern sort of visual spectacle: objects and effigies brought to life in detailed, realistic scenes. The period 1880-1910 was the popular high point of mannequin display in Europe. This text explores the phenomenon as it unfolded with the rise of was museums and folk museums in the largest cities of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Mark Sandberg asks: Why did modernity generate a cultural fascination with the idea of effigy? He shows that the idea of effigy is also a portal to understanding other aspects of visual entertainment in that period, including the widespread interest in illusionistic scenes and tableaux, in the "portability" of sights, spaces, and entire milieus. Sandberg investigates this transformation of visual culture outside the usual test cases of the largest European metropolises. He argues that Scandinavian spectators desired an unusual degree of authenticity - a cultural preference for naturalism that made its way beyond theatre to popular forms of museum display. The Scandinavian wax museums and folk-ethnographic displays of the era helped pre-cinematic spectators work out the social

Table of Contents:
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii CHAPTER ONE: The Idea of Effigy 1 CHAPTER TWO: Upstairs, Downstairs at the Wax Museum 18 A Scandinavian Panoptikon 26 Ape in the Human 29 CHAPTER THREE: The Wax Effigy as Recording Technology 37 Annihilation of Space and Time 40 Effigy as Index 47 Persuasive Relics 59 CHAPTER FOUR: Figure and Tableau 69 Showing Stories 71 The Living Tableau 82 Toeing the Line 95 Entrapment Scenarios 108 CHAPTER FIVE: Panoptikon, Metropolis, and the Urban Uncanny 117 Small Big Cities 119 Urbanity and Orientalism 126 The City in the Mirror 135 CHAPTER SIX: Vanishing Culture 145 Cultural Juxtaposition 153 Tableaux for Tourists 161 Cradle or Grave? 168 CHAPTER SEVEN: Dead Bones Rise 178 Homeless Objects 182 Props 191 CHAPTER EIGHT: Insiders 202 Cohabitation 208 Traces 216 Home, Again 224 CHAPTER NINE: Farmers and Flaneurs 232 Cultural-Historical Intoxication 238 Goldi-Locks 245 Rubes and Gypsies 250 Greater Skansen 255 CHAPTER TEN: Material Mobility 261 NOTES 275

About the Author :
Mark B. Sandberg is Associate Professor of Scandinavian and Film Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Review :
"Living Pictures, Missing Persons is a pioneering work. It gives the first thorough description of the early history of wax museums and folk museums in Scandinavia and it is at the same time a highly interesting analysis of different forms of museum display in light of theories on spectatorship. It is well written, often elegantly combining vivid anecdotal details with theoretical reflection."—Martin Zerlang, University of Copenhagen "This book stands on its own as the first comprehensive institutional study of wax and folk museums in any national context, and one that, because of the exhaustive nature of the research and the theoretical awareness of the author, succeeds in presenting their multiple forms and roles in ways that go beyond many conventional studies of the era's museums and spectacles."—Anthony Vidler, University of California, Los Angeles