Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861-2008

Reginald Marsh, Wooden Horses, 1936
"When I made my first trip to Coney Island in August, my mission was to ride the Cyclone, but my Brooklyn friend Belinda hates roller coasters. She wanted to ride the Wonder Wheel instead. I rode a Ferris wheel once in the 1960s in South Jersey when my high school girlfriend promised make-out time, but when our chair paused at the top I was so petrified I couldn’t speak, let alone enjoy amore. So no Wonder Wheel for me. No Cyclone, either, because it’s no fun to go alone. ... Later, in a crush of other bodies, we danced to a boardwalk band covering the Isley Brothers’ 'Shout' and Gary U.S. Bonds’s 'Quarter to Three,' songs I’d danced to with the Jersey girlfriend. I didn’t need that coincidence to feel overcome. Coney Island was designed to overcome. It stirs up a passionate energy just this side of anarchy. ..."
Passionate energy just this side of anarchy at San Diego Museum of Art - W.S. Di Piero
Coney Island : Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861-2008 Photography Exhibition Opens at the Brooklyn Museum New York
Art History News
Brooklyn Museum
NY Times: An American Dreamland, From the Beginning
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2009 April: Coney Island, 2010 July: Nathan's Famous, 2011 March: "An Underground Movement: Designers, Builders, Riders", Owen Smith, 2013 August: Donna Dennis: Coney Night Maze, 2013 October: Last Days of Summer at Coney Island, 2014 July: Coney Island - Directors: Steve Siegel and Phil Buehler (1973), 2015 May: The Case for Riding the Subway to the Last Stop, 2016 March: W.S. Di Piero.