Pt barnum what is it exhibition

Although the Barnum name lives on today as part of the American circus legacy, Mr. Barnum was 61 years old when the circus collaboration was presented to him. It was, in fact, his life-long love of his American Museum in New York City that drove his marketing machine and revealed a genius beyond the ideals of 19th century society.

Barnum seized every moment and found promise in every opportunity. He crafted his life this way, taking chances, stimulating change, always giving back. On the 5th of July , the nation had just celebrated its 34th year and Phineas Taylor, later to be known as P. America was a fledging nation, raw from ongoing struggles for independence and hardened by years of reconstruction and expansion.

Connecticut was grounded in Yankee heritage; stable, steadfast, frugal, and pious. Family farms rolled along the countryside, and small villages spotted the landscape. The life of the Barnum family was humble. Despite lean family resources, P. Barnum began school by the age of six.

This pilgrimage to the city proved to be a life defining adventure for young Barnum, and as he became an adult, he found himself exploring the vast diversities of the flourishing metropolis, uncovering extraordinary opportunities awaiting his discovery.

I had displayed the faculty of getting money, as well as getting rid of it; but the business for which I was destined…had not yet come to me. Amusements as we know them today did not exist. The concept of public entertainment was perceived as questionable and even considered inappropriate as Americans aspired to the highest standards of moral and civil behavior. On January 1, , P. From until , the American Museum grew into an enormous enterprise, and was promoted as having , exhibits and curiosities throughout the saloons.

The Museum occupied four conjoined buildings where workshops and laboratories were arranged to prepare exhibits. A wax-figure department to produce likenesses of notable personalities of the day, a taxidermy department and aquarium were in operation, and an elaborate set-design department satisfied the demand for an active public theater.

Amidst the performers, lecturers, and living curiosities were a host of exhibitors, demonstrating various skills and crafts, as well as new technological devices. A continual stream of changing exhibitions ranging from talking machines, panoramas of Niagara Falls, Paris and Peru, ivory carvers, glassblowers, sewing machine operators, musicians and ballerinas entertained the masses. It was through the success of the American Museum that Barnum realized that conventional ideals could be transformed through ingenuity and innovation.

The Museum embodied all that American society sought as they struggled to legitimize a new democratic frontier, and celebrate a newly found personal authority. Whether fact or fiction, the conclusion was less relevant than the experience or opportunity. To expect every visitor to America to travel half way across the continent, after making the ocean journey, would have the same effect upon prospective visitors as the thought to an American of a journey to St.

Petersburg instead of London. Aside from that, New York is our metropolis, and the foremost city of America in the best American sense. Again, in considering the financial success of the fair, we depend upon American visitors, upon the people who visit it, not once, but half a dozen or a score of times, and pay their admission each time.

New York is virtually our centre of population. It is of easy access to the people of Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Pittsburg, Baltimore, Bridgeport, and all the great cities of the East, whose combined population is probably twenty or one hundred times that in a similar radius around of any other city that has been mentioned for the exposition.

The fair must not be off the island, however. The best site for it, in my judgment, is the one selected by the committee at the north end of Central Park. Barnum three years earlier. What novel feature would I propose? Now, I will present the Fair Committee with one of my ideas—an idea that might bring me in a million of money.

In the museum at Boolak, in Egypt, lies the mummy fled corpse of Rameses II, the Pharaoh of the Exodus, with that of his daughter, the saviour of Moses, and other less distinguished of the royal Egyptian family of that era. I will relinguish [ sic ] my right of priority of claim in the idea to the Fair Committee.

Let them obtain the loan of these mortuary relics from the Egyptian Government, and allow the Khedive to send his own soldiers to guard the coffins. Think of the stupendousness of the incongruity! To exhibit to the people of the nineteenth century, in a country not discovered until 2, or 3, years after his death, the corpse of the king of whom we have the earliest record!

Consider, too, that that corpse is so perfectly preserved after thousands of years in the tomb that its features are almost perfect; so perfect that every man, woman, and child who looks upon the mummy may know the countenance of the despot who exerted so great an influence upon the history of the world. The portrayal of an African man as the link between man and monkey became fodder for anti-Lincoln cartoons.

This anti-Lincoln Currier and Ives print used Barnum's racial construct to denounce the Republican candidate and argue that slaves were not fit for citizenship. Despite the bared teeth, Barnum described him as being "playful as a kitten.

Although he played the part for years, his identity is not known. Most newspaper accounts accepted the authenticity of Barnum's claims for his "monkey man" despite the obviously human image in these photographs. Exhibit: What Is It?. Museum room: Waxworks Room.

Document type: Text.