Author Reading with Rebecca Gowers: The Violent Story behind Muybridge's San Francisco Panorama
17/10/2024
6pm - 8pm
Kingston Museum
Author Reading with Rebecca Gowers:Muybridge’s 1878 San Francisco Panorama shows us a cityscape long since lost to time. But how ‘panoramic’ was it really? What does this picture hide? 150 years ago, these same streets witnessed both a disastrous marriage and the unstoppable love of two seductive orphans, a combination that would lead to stone cold murder. Remarkably, Muybridge himself was the killer. And there would be no justice for his victim, an outcome with implications for the history of photography, and more. Author Rebecca Gowers will explain how she came to discover that the mysterious conman executed by Muybridge, with a bullet to the heart, was in fact a member of her own family. She will outline the challenge of gathering new evidence in the case, and discuss how, after a century and a half, it has at last been possible to reveal the truth of this desperate story.
Rebecca Gowers is the author of five books, fiction and non-fiction. Her work has been serialised on Radio 4, and she has twice been longlisted for the Orange Prize (now the Women’s Prize for Fiction). Her most recent title, The Scoundrel Harry Larkyns and his Pitiless Killing by the Photographer Eadweard Muybridge, was shortlisted for the 2020 Historical Writers’ Association Golden Crown award, and the following year she appeared as a talking head in the documentary Exposing Muybridge, directed by Marc Shaffer and featuring Gary Oldman. She is on the staff of the Oxford Centre for Life Writing at Wolfson College, Oxford, and is currently engaged in writing a new novel.
Praise for The Scoundrel Harry Larkyns:‘Gripping, cinematic, tragic and tender … A hugely enthralling story of a life richly lived… a contender for one of the best books of the year’ Irish Times‘…painstakingly researched account of a forgotten and troubled ne’er-do-well; it’s a story that is as eventful as it is tragic’ Guardian‘Strange, brilliant, quirky and illuminating… The fantastical twists and turns in Larkyns’s life are brilliantly, and coolly, recovered by the author’ Country Life
Admission includes exclusive 'after-hours' access to Kingston Museum's new San Francisco in Kingston: Muybridge and panoramas exhibition and a complimentary glass of wine or soft drink.
PAST EVENTS
Almost Nothing But Blue Ground: Performance Lecture
Almost Nothing But Blue Ground: Performance Lecture
When: Thursday 29 August, 6 - 7 pm
Where: Kingston Museum
Performers: Tom Pope and Matthew Benington
Fee: £5, including a complimentary drink
Join Tom Pope and Matthew Benington on their discovery of the life of Anna Atkins (1799-1871), an English botanist and photographer who was the first to use photographic images to illustrate a book. Tom and Matthew’s unique performance lecture presents their archive of cyanotype blueprints, artefacts, and stories that they gathered and created during their performative weeklong walk in 2021.
Tom Pope works in performance and photography. He has artwork in the National Portrait Gallery, the National Museum of Wales, and various private collections. Tom’s work, San Francisco Panorama (2008)’ is included in Kingston Museum’s current exhibition ‘San Francisco in Kingston: Muybridge and Panoramas’. Tom lives and works in Hastings. Matthew Benington is an artist specialising in printmaking and photography, working with themes of collective memory, gender, and land ownership. Matthew was a Stanley Picker Fellow at Kingston University in 2012-13. Matthew lives in Norwich and is a Senior Lecturer in the BA Fine Art at Norwich University of the Arts.
Kingston Museum Panorama Workshop with Click Photography
Thursday, August 3rd 2024
10:30 - 12 noon
Kingston Museum Panorama Workshop. Click Photography in association with Kingston Museum presents a new take on Panorama photography for young people aged 11 to 18. GCSE and A level Photography students will be supported with artist research pages. Students will learn about Edweard Muybridge's famous San Francisco panorama and the history of the genre, before moving outside to explore the town of his birth, Kingston upon Thames, and create new digital works using smartphones and digital cameras. Images may be displayed in the current exhibition San Fransisco in Kingston: Muybridge and Panoramas.
Please join Nick Wright all the way from America on a journey back in time to experience ultra-high-resolution views of Gold Rush San Francisco. Nick Wright has painstakingly recreated Muybridge's early panorama of the city by assembling multi-plate photographs. This will truly be an amazing chance to see old San Francisco, like never before.
Nick Wright is the founder of the History Alliance, with 2-million members, including San Francisco History and US History. He has given lectures at many institutions. His speciality is early San Francisco panoramic photography by Watkins, Muybridge, and W. H. Jackson. He grew up in Palo Alto near the Stanford Farm that sparked his interest in Muybridge.
You will be able to enter the waiting room for the talk from 5:30pm on 11/07/2024
Tremors: An Earthquake Workshop with LEGO and Robotics
31/05/2024
11am - 12:30pm
Kingston Museum
Learn about the impact of earthquakes as you build and then programme your own earthquake-testing machine out of LEGO.
Join us at Kingston Museum's Art Gallery for a Curator's Exhibition Tour. Museum Curator Seoyoung Kim will talk about the details of our latest exhibition, 'San Francisco in Kingston: Muybridge and Panoramas' and Muybridge's life and work.
