At our October meeting, we will workshop an essay by Shane Smith Morrissy,
"Art, Authority, and the Phantasmagorias of Color at the Panama Pacific International Exposition (San Francisco, CA), 1915"
The postcard craze that swept America in the early twentieth century reached its peak at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915 in San Francisco. This essay examines how the medium’s fusion of photography and lurid chromolithography produced a dreamlike vision of America that nevertheless carried the aura of scientific credibility. The postcards’ intensely colored imagery captivated everyday Americans, and the act of purchasing and inscribing them offered fair-goers a way to push back against the authority of art experts who sought to police the boundaries of elite taste. At the same time, however, this same lurid vision framed the city’s Asian population not as part of the local community but as fungible, mass-produced commodities. By tracing how color was mediated for a mass audience, this essay shows how the postcard’s commodified dreamworld simultaneously liberated some Americans while marginalizing and demeaning others.
Access the essay from the CSWG webpage.
Shane Smith Morrissy received his Ph.D. in Art History from Duke University in 2025 and is currently a History of Art and Visual Culture Fellow at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. His research investigates the intersection of art and mass-produced print ephemera, focusing on the political economy of mass media in Progressive Era America.
Organizer: Sarah