Maritime Encounters in the American Midwest

ABSTRACT

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, public displays of both humans and animals helped to reinforce a sense of natural order and progress in the rapidly developing United States. By placing the perceived primitive and natural world on display, a contrast could be made to the quickly modernizing nation. This article addresses two public exhibitions of whales held in the American Midwest – the 1880 Pioneer Inland Whaling Association’s traveling whale show helmed by Newton and the Smithsonian Institution’s full cast of a blue whale displayed at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Both exhibitions provided the opportunity for audiences living far from the ocean to encounter whales’ bodies, a feat that merged showmanship, spectacle, and science. As deceased whales were transformed for display, they took on new meanings in their afterlives. Occurring at a moment of growth in entertainment, industry, and science, the Pioneer Inland Whaling Association’s whale show emphasized tourist spectacle and novelty, while the Smithsonian Institution’s exhibition reinforced prevailing ideas about natural history and American exceptionalism. Though faced with limitations, these exhibitions touted the scale and spectacle of their subject, indicating how whales emerged as a distinct category of display.

KEYWORDS:

• Whales
• Louisiana Purchase Exposition
• animal displays

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alison Fields

Alison Fields is the Acting Director of the OU School of Visual Arts at the University of Oklahoma. She is the Mary Lou Milner Carver Professor of Art of the American West, Associate Professor of Art History. Fields is co-editor, with Elyssa Faison of Resisting the Nuclear: Art and Activism Across the Pacific (University of Washington Press, 2024) and author of Discordant Memories: Atomic Age Narratives and Visual Culture (University of Oklahoma Press, 2020). Dr. Fields currently serves as the Associate Editor of the Western Historical Quarterly.