After 1851: The material and visual cultures of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham

Echoing Joseph Paxton's question at the close of the Great Exhibition, 'What is to become of the Crystal Palace?', this book argues that there is considerable potential in studying this unique architectural and art-historical document after 1851, when it was rebuilt in the South London suburb of Sydenham. It is the first interdisciplinary essay collection to examine the Palace at Sydenham and offers new insights into exhibition cultures in nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain. The essays in this book, spanning 1851 to the present day, aim to foster new thinking about the inter-relationships between nineteenth- and twentieth-century modernities, questioning the normative understanding of a twentieth-century revolt against the 'Victorian'. Chapters bring together research on objects, materials and subjects as diverse as those represented under the glass roof of the Sydenham Palace itself; from the Venus de Milo to Sheffield steel, souvenir 'peep eggs' to war memorials, portrait busts to imperial pageants, tropical plants to cartoons made by artists on the spot, copies of paintings from ancient caves in India to 1950s film. Contributors do not simply catalogue and collect this eclectic congregation but provide new ways for assessing the significance of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham for both nineteenth- and twentieth-century studies. The volume will be of particular interest to researchers and students of British cultural history, museum studies, and art history. It includes a foreword by Isobel Armstrong.