Virtual Exhibitions

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.

Stack 13 is filled with more items and artifacts from Bridgeport, yet more importantly many of the items have to do with “The Barnum Institute of Science and History”. There are a lot of documents pertaining to the members of the Institute and also documents detailing different events and happenings that took place at the Institute.

One of my newer tasks has been to research “fun-facts” about Barnum and about his life, and put them into 160 character phrases for twitter. This is a lot harder than it looks because all of Barnum’s stories and such are very long. We have a book in the back room with hundreds of stories that Barnum wrote down, and most of them are very funny, however they are just impossible to condense.

Two of the other tasks I have undertaken are organizing the Mummy folder, along with researching circus people that performed in Barnum’s circuses. There is a lot of stuff happening in the museum, a lot of juggling of projects and multitasking. But that just makes everything so much more interesting, there have been a multitude of times where I have worked on a few items at the same time, and somehow ended connecting them all together. That’s part of the magic of working in a museum, especially one dedicated to Barnum.