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Through the Looking-Glass World: Visualizing Non-Normative Bodies in Children’s Illustration from Tenniel to Today examines how children’s illustration shapes the ways we see, understand, and imagine bodily difference. Bringing John Tenniel’s illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1872) into conversation with contemporary picture books centered on disability, sensory difference, mobility, and care, the exhibition traces changing visual approaches to embodiment. Rather than presenting a simple progression from Victorian constraint to contemporary liberation, these pairings explore where illustration locates difference: within the body, within the gaze of others, within inaccessible environments, or within relationships of care and interdependence. Through line, color, composition, perspective, and space, the exhibition considers children’s illustration not merely as a reflection of cultural attitudes toward disability, but as an active visual language that shapes which bodies young readers learn to recognize as ordinary, capable, and belonging.
Exhibit curation, research, and design: Rhea Dias, MFA’ 27
Production and installation: Miles Donovan, Tisch Library