Artist, inventor, and entrepreneur Charles Willson Peale opened the first major “museum”in Philadelphia in 1794. In a broadside distributed to the American Philosophical Society and other prominent social figures of Philadelphia, Peale emphasized that his museum would both collect and exhibit publicly a wide range of artifacts, focusing on natural history and art but including historical items as well. His museum was a for-profit enterprise, but Peale would have liked government support. To keep the doors open, he depended on attractions that ensured repeat customers.1
Peale’s museum struggled, and eventually entertainment broker P.T. Barnum bought most of the collection. Barnum’s American Museum, opened in New York City in 1840, advertised itself as a museum, but it was really little more than a “freak show.” Indeed, following the opening of Barnum’s “museum” in 1840, freak shows would remain at their height until 1940. The museum contained many exhibits and gaffes, but it also housed many people who were considered to be rarities worthy of exhibition. These people included: General Tom Thumb, a person with dwarfism; “the Aztec Twins,” albinos; the “What Is It?,” who was also a person with microcephaly; and many other “living curiosities.”2
For over 100 years, entrepreneurs organized exhibitions of people with physical, mental, and behavioral disabilities or impairments to amuse the public and generate a profit. Barnum’s “museum” and others like it became a sub-category of museums, known as “dime museums” which advertised exhibitions as educational and scientific activities, but the exhibits were actually a profitable business for those in charge.
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