Collection Connection – Film Friday

It’s #FilmFriday and our Collection Pet Takeover continues with Willow posing as a Victorian woman in the Cartes-de-visite style and then Bonnie as Colonel W.L. Beckham and Cheddar as Grace Beckham (the Hotel Grace-turned-museum’s namesake)! The Cartes-de-visite is part of the current exhibition, Early Photographic Portraits from the Permanent Collection. The exhibition features Cartes-de-visite and Cabinet Cards, which were albumen prints mounted on small cards, typically portraits of the subject. The Cartes-de-visite, invented in France, were smaller cards made between the 1860s and 1870s. A larger portrait, called the Cabinet Card, was popular up until the late 1900s. Although most of the individuals in the photographs (besides those of the royal family) are anonymous, their clothing, their pose, their gaze, all are signs of the Victorian Era they lived in. However, how much different are the digital portraits we take of ourselves and our family today than the portraits from over 150 years ago?