Ghostly Streets

Ghostly Streets
A Fragmentary Ruins Exhibit

April 2017

In the last fifteen years or so, there has been a resurgence of academic interest in ruins. This mini-exhibit suggests ways into the topic through Marquand’s holdings.

Our starting point is Rose Macaulay’s influential Pleasure of Ruins. Although it was first published in 1953, Roloff Beny’s supplementary interpretive photographs make this 1964 edition a natural choice for any exhibition. Two other works (Makarius’s Ruins and an exhibition catalog from the Sir John Soane Museum) provide broad overviews of the topic and give more historical context. The exhibit’s second half features more recent work in the tradition: two photographic collections on Pripyat (inside Chernobyl’s “Zone of Exclusion”) and an art exhibition from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

-David S. Platt

 

On display: 

  1. Roloff Beny Interprets in Photographs Pleasure of Ruins by Rose Macaulay, selected and ed. by Constance Babington Smith
    London: Thames & Hudson, 1964
    Marquand, N5330 .M13 1964q
  2. Makarius, Michel
    Ruins, trans. from the French (Ruines) by David Radzinowicz
    Paris: Flammarion, dist. by Rizzoli, 2004
    Marquand, N8237.8.R8 M3413 2004q
  3. Visions of Ruin: Architectural Fantasies & Designs for Garden Follies, the Soane Gallery 1999
    London: Sir John Soane’s Museum, 1999
    Marquand, N8237.8.R8 V57 1999
  4. Shestakov, Sergey
    Journey into the Future, Stop #1
    Lüdenscheid, Germany: Seltmann + Söhne, 2011
    Marquand Photography, TR647.S547 2011
  5. Polidori, Robert
    Zones of Exclusion: Pripyat and Chernobyl, text by Elizabeth Culbert
    Göttingen: Steidl, 2003
    Marquand Photography, TK1362.U38 P644 2003f
  6. The Stumbling Present: Ruins in Contemporary Art, exhib. org. by Elyse A. Gonzales
    Santa Barbara: Art, Design & Architecture Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2013
    Marquand, N8237.8.R8 S78 2013

 

Ghostly Streets