Comprising more than 40 photographs from the Museum’s collection, this exhibition explores the manner in which photographers from the nineteenth-century through the present day have documented spectacular scenes and events along with the curious spectators who observe them.

Images of rapt sightseers taking in natural and man-made wonders, participants in tightly orchestrated civic or religious productions, and impromptu moments of drama or self-display demonstrate the camera’s unique ability to capture the immediacy of a spectacle as well as the excitement, raw emotion, and even the boredom sometimes exhibited by its spectators.

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Photographs by Eugène Atget, Robert Frank, Gordon Parks, Diane Arbus, David Graham, and more than 30 others point to the fundamental relationship between a spectacle, its audience, and photography itself. These images reveal that photographers repeatedly seize the opportunity to record the intense yet fleeting sights, acts, and emotions on public display during spectacular events.