Virtual Exhibitions

There is very large table in one of the rooms in the airconditioned section of the building.  It's actually made of several smaller but still quite sizable tables, and surface area wise, it's probably about as big as an average sized room.  It's a sort of interim place for items which have been taken out of the mugginess of the rest of the building, but haven't found another home yet.  They have yet to be boxed and shelved, and put away lovingly.  Instead they sit waiting ...

One of the most interesting artifacts in the museum is undoutably Pa-Ib/Rose the mummy.  There have been many mysteries surrounding her over her hundred plus years at the museum and some of them are still on going.  Although such mysteries as her gender, and whether or not she belongs to her coffin have been answered, where exactly she comes from remains a mystery.  Thus far the only absolute certainty is that she was donated by P.T. Barnum's second wife, Nancy Fish.

As many of you know the tornado last year did structural damage to the museum, and because of this it is necessary to do some serious repair work to the walls and ceiling of the third floor.  Before that can happen, however,all the artifacts on the third floor must be cleared out of the way for their own safety.  As of last Friday morning only three artifacts remained on the third floor: our Mummy and two carriages.  The mummy, who is alternately known as both Pa-Ib and Rose, f...

It's been a very busy day at the Museum today, so I'll be doing a long version of this post next Tuesday instead.

For now it's suffice to say that today I held a door open for a mummy.

The Barnum Museum has a collection of four diaries all which belonged to a Civil War Soldier named Richard H. Cullen.  I have been transcribing these diaries, and on Monday afternoon I discovered in the back of one the books, what I can best describe as, a playlist.  R.H. Cullen hadwritten out a list of 20 popular songs from his era.  Precisely why he decided to write this list remains unclear, but I immediately set about researching the songs to see whatI could figure out.

Yesterday we moved a very old bicycle from the second floorto the first.  It was the type of bicyclebuilt in the late 1800s with an extraordinarily large front wheel and a very tiny back one.  Needless to say, this made the entire thing rather unwieldy, particularly because we couldn’t simply roll it.  It has about half of each of its tires left, and over the years they have turned red and started falling apart.  That and its not considered proper museum procedure to...

I’m just wrapping up my first week interning at the BarnumMuseum, and I’ve already seen and done so many interesting things that it’sdifficult to figure out where to start. First of all, it’s amazing just to be around so many artifacts.  Sometimes it’s easy to forget just how oldeverything is, and then all at once I’ll suddenly realize how much a certainitem has been through.  Yesterday, whilehelping to put away China, I looked down and saw P...

One of my favorite objects in the Museum is a carbon ledger that contains letters PT Barnum wrote as a 'foreign correspondent' while traveling Europe with Tom Thumb.  The ledger provides us with Barnum's handwriting, his writing style, his humor, and his mastery of story telling.  These letters served as the basis of much of his autobiography but there are interesting differences.  In a few of the stories, Barnum crossed out 'they' and inserted 'we' - he wrote himself into hist...

One of the greatest challenges in moving objects is making sure that they are properly recorded along the way so we don't "loose" any in the shuffle.  The basement shelves were once the home of the majority of our onsite collection. But after the tornado, items susceptible to water damage could no longer be housed there.  Each time an item is moved we make sure to record its location so when we reopen each item can be accurately located and properly displayed.