Strobridge Exhibit - The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton

March 25, 2011
This Is Strobridge! On View at the Main Library
Through May 13
Discover the creative imagination of one of America’s most famous printing
companies. In conjunction with the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Public
Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County is displaying theater and circus
posters, calendar cards, and other beautifully detailed materials by the
Cincinnati-based Strobridge Lithographing Company. The exhibit, This Is
Strobridge!, is on view through May 13 in the Main Library’s Cincinnati
Room, on the third floor.
Founded in the late nineteenth century, the Strobridge firm became a leader in
outdoor advertisement for amusement enterprises. The exhibition emphasizes
the spectacular circus and theater posters, which made the reputation and
fortune of the company. They help define a period of American social and
visual history and bear vibrant witness to a time when this form of popular art
was moving to the center of outdoor commercial advertising.
Related Program: From Desperate Housewives to American Idols: Popular
Performances 100 Years Ago From the Strobridge Collection
(Saturday, April 9, 3:00 pm.)
• Guest Speaker: Dr. Katie Johnson
• Main Library - Genealogy & Local History Study Area, Third Floor
What did Americans do for entertainment 100 years ago? While there was no
television, there was nonetheless a good deal of popular entertainment that resembles
the very best—and worst—of American television today. With clues from the
gorgeously illustrated Strobridge poster collection, Dr. Johnson will trace the
highlights of popular performances including theatre, musicals, and minstrelsy. From
Ben Hur to Peter Pan to award-winning melodrama, there is something here for
everyone.
About the Speaker: Dr. Katie Johnson, author of Sisters in Sin: Brothel Drama in America, 1900-1920,
Cambridge, 2009, is an Associate Professor of English at the Miami University, where she teaches American
drama, gender studies, film theory, and performances studies and theory. She has a Ph.D. in Drama History,
Theory, and Criticism, University of Washington; an M.A in German Languages and Literature, University of
Massachusetts, Amherst; and a B.A. in German and Peace Studies, St. Olaf College. She received the Gerald Kahn
Award for best essay in the field of theatre studies in North America by a young scholar in 2002, awarded by the
American Society for Theatre Research and has been nominated several times for the Miami Alumni Effective
Teacher and Outstanding Professor by Miami’s Associated Student Government.
more ▼
Strobridge – pg. 2
About the Exhibit Curator: At the Main Library,
Jeanne Strauss-De Groote, who has studied in the U.S.
and France, utilizes her reference skills while serving
customers and working on special projects in the
Genealogy & Local History Department. Her areas of
responsibility include organizing, inventorying, and
conserving the Library’s extensive collection of war
posters, developing and maintaining the Library’s
unique artists’ books, and providing access to the
Library’s vintage postcard collection. Ms. Strauss-De
Groote’s fascination with historic collections stems
from “their link to the past and what they tell us about
who we are.”
Her education (M.A. in History and B.A. in History of
Art from universities in Paris, and M.L.S. at Indiana
University), set the groundwork for working in
archives, museums and libraries both in France (Musee
d’Orsay, archives of ministry of foreign affairs, archives of the Shoah Memorial) and in the U.S. (Procter &
Gamble historical archives, rare books Lilly Library at Indiana University, and currently the Public Library of
Cincinnati and Hamilton County).
For more information about the exhibit and the program, contact the Genealogy & Local History
Department at (513) 369-6905 or visit www.CincinnatiLibrary.org.