(Banner Created by Mark Coleman for The National Fairground Archive.)
The exhibit, Humbug! Celebrating 200 Years of P.T Barnum, showcases original posters, handbills, and memorabilia used by the famed entertainer to promote his shows over 100 years ago. It celebrates the trickster who took America and England by storm with his collection of real and invented freakish attractions. The curator of the exhibit, Professor Vanessa Toulmin, Director of the NFA, is pleased to have the chance to show off many one-of-a-kind items from her collection: "The archive material on display is usually all in boxes behind the scenes, so it's a fantastic opportunity to see around 100 items from the depths of our archive." When asked to explain the magic of Barnum she replies: "He's probably the world's greatest showman. He created what we know today as PR/marketing and showmanship. Everything I've ever thought of, he did it!"
(Banners Created by Mark Coleman for The National Fairground Archive.)
Chang and Eng Bunker, Barnum's famous Siamese Twins, were joined at the sternum and shared a larger than normal liver. Born in 1811 in Siam (now Thailand) they arrived in the United States in 1829. At age forty-two, Chang and Eng married sisters Addie and Sally Yates, and they fathered twenty-one children. The two died on the same day, three hours apart. The fused liver of the Bunker brothers was preserved and is currently on display at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia.
(Photo Courtesy Of National Fairground Archive.)
Bennett's sculpture took four months to create, not counting a significant amount of time for research. He was impressed not only with Barnum's theatricality, but also with his anti-slavery views in the Civil War era. He found it both ironic and admirable that Barnum worked to expose the fraudulent psychics and medical charlatans of the time, who took advantage of the poor and uneducated. Bennett explains his half human/half insect take on Barnum this way: "As you will see in the sculpture Barnum has got cricket's legs. It's a reference to Pinocchio. Jiminy Cricket was the moral guardian for Pinocchio and I wanted to put that across with Barnum. I wanted to have fun with the transformation and create something almost in a comic book style. I didn't want to create something really serious, but have fun and entertain as well as inform."
Mark Coleman's (very) idealized take on Barnum's Bathing Beauty. Before exhibiting his "mermaid" in 1842, Barnum created a media frenzy by claiming that: "Dr. Griffin, agent of the Lyceum of Natural History in London" would be visiting New York with a "veritable mermaid taken among the Feejee Islands." ("Dr. Griffin" was Barnum's friend Levi Lyman.) The creature was really the upper torso of a monkey sewn to the lower half of a fish. It was one of Barnum's biggest attractions during his first year in show biz.
(Banners Created by Mark Coleman for The National Fairground Archive.)
Barnum claimed former slave Joice Heth was 161 years old, and had been a nanny to George Washington. Upon her death, Barnum had an autopsy performed to prove her age. When the doctor determined Heth had died at 80, Barnum claimed it was the wrong body, and swore that "the real Joice Heth is on tour."
Painter Mark Copeland's ten canvas banners celebrate such Barnum stalwarts as The FeeJee Mermaid, General Tom Thumb, Chang and Eng The Siamese Twins, Madame Josephine Clofullia The Bearded Lady, and William Henry Johnson AKA Zip AKA What Is It? Copeland has a great affection for the letterpress posters used to advertise Victorian traveling side shows: "I always loved the nonsense that was written on them. The way they're worded, particularly the old ones: you sort of promise more than you deliver in a lot of ways, and that's fine." His banners for Humbug! bear that same bombastic braggadocio.(Archival Material Courtesy Of The National Fairground Archive.)
(Banners Created By Mark Coleman for The National Fairground Archive.)
The three foot, 4 inch tall General Tom Thumb, born Charles Sherwood Stratton, was a distant relative of Barnum's. Stratton and Barnum began to work together when the boy was only four years of age. He was given singing, acting, and dancing lessons, and toured America by the time he was five. A year later, in 1844, he appeared before Queen Victoria and played with the three-year-old Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII. Tom Thumb married Lavinia Warren, also a midget, in 1863. Barnum's advertisements often depicted the couple with a child although they had no children.
(Archival Material Courtesy Of National Fairground Archive.)
So step right up to the Western Bank Library between March 5 and May 27, 2010 and behold: Ancient and authentic artifacts of a bygone age! Larger-than-life-size likenesses of the strangest sideshow attractions the world has ever known! The amazing and mysterious half-man half-beast effigy of the showman who charmed the crowned heads of Europe! And for a special limited engagement: (Just returned from the bestial badlands of Blackpool!) The One and Only Venus Vanessa, Scholarly Showgirl of Sheffield!
The Circus World at Baraboo has a lot of information on Barnum.
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