The Great Coney Island Spectacularium August 12, 2012

Coney Island at the end of the 19th Century was the high point in a long history of immersive amusements that were common before the advent of cinema. These attractions grew out of theater, dime museums and magic lantern shows, and featured spectacles on a scale that is hard to imagine today. In Coney Island-as in the late Victorian world's fairs, museums, department stores and parks-a universe of spectacle was refined and perfected in ways that now often seem perplexing and bizarre, blurring the boundaries between science and spectacle, current affairs and entertainment, and education and titillation. 'The Great Coney Island Spectacularium' is an exhibition that aims to explore, celebrate, and evoke turn-of-the-20th-Century Coney Island as the pinnacle of this kind of pre-cinematic immersive and spectacular amusement. The exhibition-a collaboration between Coney Island Museum Artist-in-Residence Joanna Ebenstein and Museum Director Aaron Beebe-will feature a combination of commissioned new works, curated antiquities, and installation.