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Doctoral candidate Margarita Karasoulas served as guest curator for the Bruce Museum's exhibition, Electric Paris (May 14-September 4, 2016). Electric Paris is an expanded version of a show first organized by the Clark Art Institute and Hollis Clayson in 2013, and is based on Clayson's current book project. Each of the exhibition's four sections--Nocturnes, Lamplit Interiors, Street Light, In and Out of the Spotlight--reveals the prominent role of artificial illumination in the art of the period and in the making and transformation of modern Paris. Fifty works--paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs--by such artists as Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jean Béraud, James Tissot, Charles Marville, Childe Hassam, Charles Courtney Curran, Alfred Maurer and Maurice Prendergast, among others, are on view.
Karasoulas was responsible for all aspects related to the planning and organization of the exhibition, from choosing and researching objects, writing the audio guide and wall and label text, overseeing the installation, handling press interviews, and working with the Education department to plan the lecture series and programming. The exhibition also provided Karasoulas with an opportunity to further her research on the Ashcan School. Her catalogue essay, "The Glamour of the Footlights: Everett Shinn in the City of Light" situates Everett Shinn's early works within their larger historical, cultural, and transatlantic contexts, demonstrating how new and rapidly evolving technologies of urban lighting played an important role in shaping the artist's light-based aesthetic.
