Virtual Exhibitions

This year I participated in the #AskACurator day. This event had over 600 museums from over 30 different countries available on Twitter to answer questions.  Some interactions were direct but other people posted general questions for anyone to answer. Just as I would answer one question, 24 more would appear with the hashtag and I was in complete social media overload! Here are a few of the more interesting questions I answered:

@DrDonnaYates: Everyone should be show...

Let's admit it, when meeting someone new your first question is often "what do you do?" And by that, the questioning individual means "what is your job?"

When I answer "registrar" I am met with blank stares or sometimes a question about college grades and transcripts.  So my tagline for being a registrar has become "I research and catalog artifacts."  This is true of my position because we are a small institution and I have the luxury of researching.  But for ...

P.T. Barnum traveled the world, and on one of his trips he happend to land in Paris. While in France he atteneded the auction of a deceased Russian prince's belongings and decided to partake in the bidding. The prince had unfortunately put his "Coat of Arms" on many of the items that were to be auctioned off, and due to this, no one was buying them. ...

P.T. Barnum’s second wife, Nancy Fish, donated Pa-Ib, a 4000-year-old Egyptian mummy, to the museum on August 15, 1894. We recently received over 200 high-resolution images of Pa-Ib and the sarcophagus, which were taken by the folks over at Yale. It is amazing to see, in great detail, all the different features and elements of the mummy.

My job was to go through these 200 images and pick out about 30 that...

Happy Belated 4th of July to everyone! Due to the holiday, there was not a lot going on at the Museum this week, however, today is a very special day! Born on July 5th, 1810, P. T. Barnum turns 203 years old today! Although he doesn't look a day over 107....

Barnum was born in the small town of Bethel and slowly but surely grew up and became the man that we all know today. Without many of his accomplishment...

This week the Barnum Museum team welcomed two new faces for a few days. With open arms, the Museum welcomed Kasey Grier and Neil Harris; both are here to help with a special project.

Kasey Grier is the Director of Museum Studies at the University of Delaware and Neil Harris is Professor Emeritus of History and Art History at the University of Chicago. Neil is also the author of the definitive biography of P. T....

This past week has been packed with tasks, both small and large. Ranging from the inventory of more stacks, to researching facts for future tweets. At any point throughout the past few days, there have been multiple people doing multiple things. The tasks I have been working on include aiding in the inventory of Stack 13, finding some good ideas to tweet, researching circus performers and organizing the dreaded Mummy folder.

Week four has come to a very soggy end, however it has been unbelievably educational as well. This week I focused on inventory, mainly on that of the shelving units located in our back office. There are 15 shelving units, each with 4 or 5 shelves on them, and on each of those shelves there are boxes upon boxes of different items. My task has been to help the staff locate all these items, figure out where they are supposed to be, and update the inventory l...

Hey everyone! I am Sebastian and I am one of the new interns here at the Barnum Museum. This is my third week of interning and I finally believe I am getting the hang of everything. There is a cornucopia of information just waiting to be researched and I dove right in. With the Museum unfortunately not technically up and running, there is a lot of “behind the scenes” work that needs to be done. Over the past few weeks, the largest task I have ...