The Sea Serpent of Regent Street: On the Evidentiary Strategies of Nineteenth-Century Exhibitions.

Much of the heterogeneity of London's exhibitionary culture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries can be attributed to the increasing geographical range of sources from which its objects were culled. Spaces of exhibition during this period constituted places of epistemic tethering, where long chains of transportation and communication, which extended out into the world, finally came aground. Questions of authenticity, provenance, and origin were implicated in a particularly acute way in this period, spurring new evidentiary practices. This essay explores these practices by juxtaposing two exhibits, separated by about twenty years, and consisting of dramatically disparate materials. One was a Spanish Baroque altarpiece, exported under the duress of war, which arrived with only the written testimonies of various intermediaries to attest to its authenticity. The second, a natural history specimen proclaimed as a mythical "sea serpent," appeared with a far more elaborate evidentiary ensemble, including engravings and paintings, as well as the presence of the fisherman who had caught the beast. The ways in which these two events sought to persuade their viewers, and the responses they evoked, help to illuminate some of the central contradictions of evidence and belief within this exhibitionary culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]