What Jane Saw

<http://www.whatjanesaw.org/>

Attendees at Janine Barchas's lively roundtable session at the 2013 ASECS convention, "Has Jane Austen Jumped the Shark?" (the general consensus: a slightly qualified "no, or at least not yet"), were handed a glossy promotional bookmark announcing the forthcoming launch of the website What Jane Saw, scheduled to go live the following month. Barchas had been working with a team of programmers and student research assistants at the University of Texas to create an interactive "walk-through" website that reproduces the experience of visiting a three-room exhibition of 141 paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds, an exhibit that Austen went to see at the British Institution in London. The launch date was timed to coincide with the two hundredth anniversary of her visit, which according to Austen's correspondence occurred on 24 May 1813.

As evidenced by the presence of pre-launch bookmarks, the University of Texas is proud of the project and considers it an important showcase of talent provided by faculty, staff, and students from both the academic and technical side.¹ As the first wildly popular themed museum show in British history—the controversial Parthenon, or "Elgin" marbles that would inspire Keats, Flaxman, and so many others would not be acquired by the British Museum until 1816—the Reynolds retrospective represents a significant moment in the history of the visual arts. It was a high-profile affair from the very start: along with the ubiquitous Prince Regent, guests at the opening party included Lord Byron and Sarah Siddons, whose famous 1784 portrait in the guise of the Tragic Muse hung in a place of honor beside Reynolds's massive depiction of George III. Austen's visit was under somewhat less glamorous circumstances that more closely replicated the experience of most visitors, who purchased tickets and flocked to the British Institution at the rate of up to 800 people per day over the course of the exhibit's three-month run.

The choice of Austen and the date of her visit as the thematic center for this website is a useful concept that keeps the site from becoming just another loosely connected gallery of Reynolds paintings—an admirable project, but there are plenty of virtual galleries out there. Since the exhibit itself and its corresponding catalog went through minor changes and additions over the course of its run at the British Institution, the May 1813 date grounds the paintings and their position on the walls in time, giving the sense of participating in a particular moment in history. Similarly, the presence of Austen herself as a background figure is a helpful constraint. The decision to build the site around Austen's experience rather than around an amorphous and anonymous Regency audience limited the choice of what to include in the corresponding text, assisting the authors in their goal of providing coherent background information without overwhelming a visitor with a flood of unrelated facts.

And, of course, Austen's crossover popularity does not hurt in drawing interest from a huge potential audience that might never even have heard of Reynolds. Reviews of the website were posted by the New York Times and the London Guardian within twenty-four hours of the launch, a press buzz as enthusiastic as the exhibit's first time around, two centuries before.²

As a model for interdisciplinary cooperation, the site is inspiring. Website design, art history, semiotics, literary historicism, and even the burgeoning field of celebrity studies come together to create an experience that could enhance any number of classes or research projects dealing with the end of the long eighteenth century . . . or, for that matter, simply provide an enjoyable way to while away some idle minutes, or possibly a couple of productive hours, on the Internet.

A helpful "About What Jane Saw" page, which can be reached through a menu available throughout the site, explains the thinking that went into solving various problems that come up when one is attempting to recreate an experience lost in time: What did the exhibit rooms look like on May 24th, 1813? How were the paintings hung? What background knowledge...