Serial Style: The Business of Being Irene Castle, the multimedia exhibit about Irene Castle, curated by Wharton Studio Museum and Cornell Fashion + Textile Collection at Tompkins Center for History and Culture,  will be open Wednesday-Saturday, 10am-5pm through Saturday, February 26th, 2022.

On display since July 1, 2021,  Serial Style focuses on Castle's participation in silent film production, fashion industry endeavors, and philanthropy. For the first time ever, Castle's personal photo albums -- including movie industry snapshots and photos she took of her everyday life in Ithaca --are displayed alongside extant examples of dresses from her eponymous fashion line, Irene Castle Corticelli Fashions. Many of these artifacts are shown against the backdrop of a large breathtaking portrait of Irene Castle, painted around 1920 by Professor Olaf Brauner, a Cornell faculty member and head of the Department of Fine Arts in the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning from 1896 - 1939.

Castle was an ingenious businesswoman, compelling silent film actress, and advocate for animal rights; Serial Style: The Business of Being Irene Castle celebrates the unique ways she broke barriers for women in film, fashion, and philanthropy during the heyday of the Wharton's moving picture production in Ithaca; WSM thanks Cornell University for its support of this exhibit. Serial Style is part of The History Center's expansive installation Breaking Barriers: Women's Lives and Livelihoods which runs through March 14th 2022.

Exhibit Hall Hours are 10am-5pm Wednesday through Saturday. Please check The History Center's website for any changes to that schedule.

Images of Irene Castle are courtesy of Castle McLaughlin

Wharton Studio Museum and Historic Ithaca are excited to have collaborated on Biggest Little Movie City: Ithaca's Theaters Then and Now, a new multimedia exhibit highlighting and celebrating Ithaca’s rich legacy of movie making and watching. The exhibit is on view 10am-5pm Tuesdays through Saturdays from February 3 through April 2022 at the Tompkins Center for History and Culture's Atrium Tower, 110 N. Tioga Street/The Commons in downtown Ithaca.

By the mid-nineteen teens, downtown Ithaca boasted an abundance of beautiful theaters –- The Star, The Crescent, and The Lyceum among them -- where the city’s denizens flocked daily to watch movies and episodic serials. The development of motion pictures and the burgeoning of the movie industry –- including the city’s own Wharton, Inc. Studios -- allowed people to be transported to other worlds and escape, for a time, their daily routines by simply paying an admission fee to enjoy a movie on the big screen.

Curated by Historic Ithaca and Wharton Studio Museum and designed by Joe Lamarre of Uncommonplace, the exhibit explores all seven movie theaters in downtown Ithaca, as well as the Willard Straight Theater on Cornell University’s campus, built in the late 20s, and the current home of Cornell Cinema. Digital screens on either side of the Atrium Tower afford the visitor the opportunity to dive more deeply into related materials, including film clips from the Wharton Studio era, and to discover more about what the moviegoers’ experience was like in that era.

The exhibit is made possible by Canopy by Hilton Ithaca Downtown. The hotel is built on the site of the former Strand Theatre and its Strand Café is named for the theater. Exhibit Co-Sponsors are The State Theatre in Ithaca and Cornell Cinema; and the exhibit’s Media Sponsor is Cinemapolis.

Location:  Level "T” of the Human Ecology Building, Cornell University, Ithaca NY.

In 2013, WSM and The History Center collaborated to develop Behind the Lens: A Snapshot of Propaganda at the Turn of the 20th Century, a free-form architectural installation illustrating a time in the early part of the 20th century,  when radio, the printed page, and movies were tools of psychological warfare that were often colorful, dramatic, and often outrageous in scope and statement.  The exhibit featured film clips edited by Moving Box.

Location: The History Center, Ithaca, NY

A re-installation from Romance, Exploits & Peril: When Movies Were Made in Ithaca

An installation celebrating Ithaca’s once numerous historic theatres, Trip the Light Fantastic was originally designed for the State Theatre Box Office window as part of Romance, Exploits & Peril exhibit in 2011 and reconfigured for a space at The History Center. The exhibit featured an 1896 mutascope and a small LED screen that played the film one would see if one cranked the mutascope.

Location: The History Center, Ithaca, NY