Traveling Exhibits

Looking East:

William Howard Taft and the 1905 Mission to Asia

The Photographs of Harry Fowler Woods

Available beginning Summer, 2009

On July 8, 1905, one of the first and largest U.S. foreign diplomatic delegations embarked on the S.S. Manchuria from San Francisco for a three-month goodwill tour of Japan, the Philippines, and China. Under the leadership of Secretary of War William Howard Taft, the entourage of thirty-five U.S. congressmen, seven U.S. senators, and a group of civilians included Alice Roosevelt, daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, and the media darling of the era.

On board the Manchuria, the amateur photographer Harry Fowler Woods brought along a new technology: hand held cameras. Woods recorded more than 700 photographs during the three-month mission. Until the appearance of the portable Kodak camera, photography was reserved for professionals, but the introduction of the dry plate negative in 1879 and the new lightweight, hand-held camera in 1888 signaled the beginning of the “snapshot” craze. Woods assembled his snapshots in carefully captioned albums and store them in a family hunting camp in the Adirondack Mountains where they would remain for nearly a century.

Recently rediscovered and assembled as a traveling exhibit, these photographs portray a defining moment of Western and U.S. history that marked the end of the great European colonial empires and the birth of an American empire. They reflect America’s newly developing imperial relationship with the rest of the world, and her unique administrative colonial relationship to the Philippines.

LINKS

Click here to see a video about Looking East © 2008 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Click here for more information about the Mission to Asia and Harry Fowler Woods at the Ohio Historical Society website.

EXHIBIT CONTENTS

Approximately 30 framed black and white reproductions; graphic panels with numerous reproductions, historic timeline, media collage; two era cameras; reproduction albums; slide show. Contents subject to change..

SUPPORTING MATERIALS

Promotional materials, Teacher Guide (grades 6-12), installation instructions

SIZE

To be determined

PARTICIPATION FEE

To be determined

SHIPPING

Inbound

ITINERARY

9/11/05 - 9/13/05    William Howard Taft National Historic Site,
                                    Cincinnati, Ohio

4/20/07 - 6/16/07    William Howard Taft National Historic Site,
                                     Cincinnati, Ohio

6/18/07– 7/16/07     Old Forge Arts Center, Old Forge, New York

1/17/08– 2/8/08       The Nippon Gallery at The Nippon Club,

                                     New York, NY

8/22/08 – 10/5/08    Old Forge Arts Center, Old Forge, New York

1/24/09 – 5/9/09      Cincinnati Museum Center (tentative*)

5/23/09 – 9/13/09

9/26/09 – 1/10/10

1/23/10 – 5/16/10

5/29/10 – 9/12/10

9/25/10 – 1/9/11      Sons of the American Revolution, Louisville, KY 

                                  (tentative*)

1/22/11 – 5/8/11

5/21/11 – 9/5/11

*Tentative venues subject to change.

Call the Department of Traveling Exhibits at (800) 733-2077
x 1-7061 for additional information or venue availability.