A famous saying around Coney Island, attributed to Steeplechase Park creator George Tilyou and now painted on a mural outside the aquarium, reads: “If Paris is France, Coney Island, between June and September, is the world.”
So what does Coney Island become during the rest of the year? Starting this week we have the answer: a comprehensive, colorful, historical, informative and textured exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. The just-opened “Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861-2008” gives visitors a chance to walk through a timeline of the People’s Playground as easily as they’d walk along the boardwalk.
“Coney Island has served as a muse for this extraordinary array of artists for a period of over 150 years,” says exhibit curator Robin Jaffee Frank. “So many of the artists perceived it as a prism to view the American experience.”
Displaying that experience starts with Civil War-era paintings, when Coney Island first emerged as a seaside resort town and the only road to it was paved with oyster shells. Then come pieces of old boardwalk games, banners from sideshows and relics of rides — including Cy, the famous Cyclops from the Spook-A-Rama ride at Deno’s Wonder Wheel Amusement Park.
The exhibit is arranged chronologically, from those early days in the 19th century to Coney Island’s post-1960s decline and attempted renewal in 2008, and includes colorful Coney Island-style signage by artist Stephen Powers.
The influence of Coney Island extends well beyond the spot itself, so TVs showing clips of “Annie Hall” and “Requiem for a Dream” are scattered about (“The Warriors” didn’t make the cut). Looking through the photos of crowds who morphed from full-length bathing suits to hand-holding gay couples is to see a portrait of America in transition.
“As [artist] Reginald Marsh said,” Frank relates, “ ‘The best show is the people themselves.’ ”