From 1837 to 1901, Queen Victoria ruled a British Empire that grew to span a quarter of the globe and include some 450 million people. Her reign coincided with a period of extraordinary social and technological change—and a revolution in visual culture. Images of Victoria were ubiquitous. Broadsides, weeklies, literary annuals, newspapers, engravings, souvenirs, postage stamps, coins, and photographs brought the sovereign, and the monarchy, into peoples’ homes and lives, and shaped their expectations of and responses to the real and figurative Queen. Rather than a history of the nineteenth century, the British Empire, or Victoria’s reign, this exhibition is a look at ‘framed’ imagery, for Victoria depicted was Victoria defined.

The exhibit is on view through December 20, 2019