American Museum

…on dance performances at Barnum’s American Museum. By the 1840s Lane also had established himself in the dance houses of the Five Points district of New York City, an area inhabited by Irish immigrants and free African Americans. In that melting-pot environment, Lane began to experiment with the mixture of…

…bidders to acquire John Scudder’s American Museum, in New York City, a five-story marble structure filled with stuffed animals, waxwork figures, and similar conventional exhibits. The new owner rapidly transformed the museum into a carnival of human curiosities, dramatic theatricals, beauty contests, and other sensational attractions. Although driven at the…

…the acquisition of New York’s American Museum, which he turned into a showcase for the sensational and the bizarre. More than 82 million visitors—including such notables as Henry James, Charles Dickens, and the prince of Wales—visited the museum to examine its human and animal curiosities, some genuine (such as Chang…

…hunger for spectacle with his American Museum in New York City, which presented all manner of human and animal curiosities, mixing exoticized reality with fantastic fabrications.