March 25, 2011
This Is Strobridge! On View at the Main Library
Through May 13
Discover the creative imagination of one of America’s most famous printing companies. In conjunction with the
Cincinnati Art Museum, the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County is displaying theater and circus
posters, calendar cards, and other beautifully detailed materials by the Cincinnati-based Strobridge Lithographing
Company. The exhibit, This Is Strobridge!, is on view through May 13 in the Main Library’s Cincinnati Room, on
the third floor.
Founded in the late nineteenth century, the Strobridge firm became a leader in outdoor advertisement for
amusement enterprises. The exhibition emphasizes the spectacular circus and theater posters, which made the
reputation and fortune of the company. They help define a period of American social and visual history and bear
vibrant witness to a time when this form of popular art was moving to the center of outdoor commercial
advertising.
Related Program: From Desperate Housewives to American Idols: Popular
Performances 100 Years Ago From the Strobridge Collection
(Saturday, April 9, 3:00 pm.)
 Guest Speaker: Dr. Katie Johnson
 Main Library - Genealogy & Local History Study Area, Third Floor
What did Americans do for entertainment 100 years ago? While there was no television, there was nonetheless a
good deal of popular entertainment that resembles the very best—and worst—of American television today. With
clues from the gorgeously illustrated Strobridge poster collection, Dr. Johnson will trace the highlights of popular
performances including theatre, musicals, and minstrelsy. From Ben Hur to Peter Pan to award-winning
melodrama, there is something here for everyone.
About the Speaker: Dr. Katie Johnson, author of Sisters in Sin: Brothel Drama in America, 1900-1920,
Cambridge, 2009, is an Associate Professor of English at the Miami University, where she teaches American
drama, gender studies, film theory, and performances studies and theory. She has a Ph.D. in Drama History,
Theory, and Criticism, University of Washington; an M.A in German Languages and Literature, University of
Massachusetts, Amherst; and a B.A. in German and Peace Studies, St. Olaf College. She received the Gerald Kahn
Award for best essay in the field of theatre studies in North America by a young scholar in 2002, awarded by the
American Society for Theatre Research and has been nominated several times for the Miami Alumni Effective
Teacher and Outstanding Professor by Miami’s Associated Student Government.
About the Exhibit Curator: At the Main Library, Jeanne Strauss-De Groote, who has studied in the U.S. and
France, utilizes her reference skills while serving customers and working on special projects in the Genealogy &
Local History Department. Her areas of responsibility include organizing, inventorying, and conserving the
Library’s extensive collection of war posters, developing and maintaining the Library’s unique artists’ books, and
providing access to the Library’s vintage postcard collection. Ms. Strauss-De Groote’s fascination with historic
collections stems from “their link to the past and what they tell us about who we are.”
Her education (M.A. in History and B.A. in History of Art from universities in Paris, and M.L.S. at Indiana
University), set the groundwork for working in archives, museums and libraries both in France (Musee d’Orsay,
archives of ministry of foreign affairs, archives of the Shoah Memorial) and in the U.S. (Procter & Gamble
historical archives, rare books Lilly Library at Indiana University, and currently the Public Library of Cincinnati
and Hamilton County).
For more information about the exhibit and the program, contact the Genealogy & Local History
Department at (513) 369-6905 or visit www.CincinnatiLibrary.org.