Making Space for Empire: India in Panoramas and Dioramas, 1830–1851.

This article explores the evolution of panoramas (360° canvases) and dioramas (moving pictures) of India exhibited in London between 1830 and 1851. Beginning with Robert Burford's 1830 panorama of Calcutta and moving chronologically through a number of case studies, it charts how ambulatory and moving pictures increasingly embraced the aesthetic and somatic limitations and possibilities of their painted landscape format. In contrast with texts and museum displays presenting colonial information about South Asia, panoramas and dioramas processed colonial information provided by those in the field in ways that prioritized aesthetic and corporeal experiences. These events were ambiguous in effect and medium, appealing to both body and mind, and providing both serious art and vicarious thrills to a significant metropolitan audience. The article argues that, in invoking these responses, panoramas and dioramas worked to shape imperial bodies and subjectivities at a time when Britain's colonial territory in South Asia was under expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]