Themes in American History

Barnum’s American Museum was located at the corner of Broadway and Ann Street in New York, from 1841 to 1865. The museum was mysteriously burnt at that time and the Lost museum was recreated to have people in modern time to visit and experience culture in the 19th century through website.  The museum offered both strange, and educational attractions.

Barnum opened his museum  to create a place where families could go for wholesome, affordable entertainment, but his success drew from the fact that he knew how to entice an audience. At its peak, the museum was open fifteen hours a day and had as many as 15,000 visitors a day. The museum was a spectacular place for people coming to enjoy it in 19th century.  People came to this place with their families and socialize with other people.  The cultural history of New York was people gathered in one place and watch other people’s show and share their opinions with each other while they were exploring the museum.

In my opinion, the strength about the website as a historical tool like Lost museum is that it helps people to experience and have more understanding about the historical facts that were really exist and greatly affected people but been destroyed. The weakness was it was mimicking the historical event, the accuracy would be affected.

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The Barnum’s American Museum was the popular attraction in 19th century New York City. P.T.Barnum purchased this museum from John Scudder in 1841. By 1850 he had greatly influence on the mid-19th century popular culture. The museum was burned down at the end of the Civil War. In this lost museum, you can find exotic animals from around the world, a number of “human curiosities” and many different wonders. Barnum used different kinds of innovative ways to dazzle the audiences. The museum displayed automata that imitated human and animal behavior and lantern slide shows, cosmoramas, and panoramas that presented images in new ways. The museum foreshadowed the commercial culture and pop culture in the United States. The museum is not only a place for entertainment, it also promoted the education on natural science in its animal exhibition, included historical context in its paintings and wax figures, and temperance reform and Shakespear dramas in its “Lecture Room”. Through adding educational value into its exhibitions, Barnum avoided to offend the religiously inclined. The Barnum’s American Museum was a single place where the people from different classes, immigrant, tourists, and residents, men and women could gather. It reflected the diversity of the American population at that time. However, in order to reinforce the white identities of museum patrons, african americans were only allowed in the museum on a limited basis. It was a key site for the antebellum articulation of whiteness. In addition, many of the exhibits in the museum reflected the emerging political and social crises that led to secession and Civil War.

The website has re-constructed the Barnum’s American Museum. We could explore the museum in a 3-D interactive environment. In my opinion, this website is pretty good as a historical tool but it would be better if it could allow us to check the museum in full-screen. Also, the website should add a side bar so that it could provide us more historical context and background information when we are navigating the museum. It would be more convenient too if the website has an audio guide.

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The Barnum museum shows that the entertainment in 19^th century NYC is pretty rich. When I visited the museum, I was impressed by different performers, lecturers, and curiosities. One surprised thing I found is that these performers, lecturers, and curiosities demonstrated 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, and musicians. So I think the entertainment in 19^th century NYC is combined with new technology and new studies. It is not only just entertainment for enjoy people, but also gave new knowledge to people. And this knowledge still affect people live today. In the second floor, I saw an exhibition called The mechanism of human facial expressions which was contributed by French neurologist Duchenne de Boulogne. He combined his intimate knowledge of facial anatomy with his skill in photography and expertise in using electricity to stimulate individual facial muscles to produce a fascinating interpretation of the ways in which the human face portrays emotions. Until today the plates from Mechanism are highly valued as landmarks of photographic history and art.

America was a new and culturally emerging nation. Some amusements as we know them today did not exist at 19^th century. 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. The opening of the Barnum Museum challenged this popular social ideology. The Museum became a place for family entertainment, enlightenment and instructive amusement. It became a shrine for advancing public knowledge of fine arts, music, literature and the marvels of nature, showcasing natural curiosities alongside artistic and historic exhibitions. It played an important role in cultural history of NYC and even the U.S.

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Half fish, half human (is it possible?)

The lost Museum created by Barnun in the 19th century

I think that Barnun’s entertaiment in the 19th Century was original for the time. He was trying to combine what he thought about American History and a Freak show at the same time. Let’s be real, what is that fish thing in the picture above. He had a collection of birds and beasts living in the same cage happily that is odd. Besides I believe that if one went missing he replaced it right away. What I really liked a lot was the “Glass Steam Engine” even though, there is no clear picture of it, from an angle it looks amazing. The museum also have a small theater where there was different types of shows.

The museum tried to entertain and educate with exhibits on natural history, American history, and with attractions of enormous nature. What shocked me was that everyone was allowed to enter to the museum with the exception of African Americans until the Civil War. New Yorkers of diverse ethnic, gender, and class identities mingled in the museum’s shared cultural space. People likes entertainment of all types and shapes and this shows it.

One of the strengths of the museum website as a historical tools is that this museum was real. It entertain people in the 19th century. The main weakness is that most of the pictures that are available to see doesn’t have any type of description so people like me doesn’t know who they are or what they did in history.

Maria Leon

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