Weird and Wonderful: The Dime Museum in America

by Andrea Stulman Dennett

Dioramas and panoramas, freaks and magicians, waxworks and menageries, obscure relics and stuffed animals--a dazzling assortment of curiosities attracted the gaze of the nineteenth-century spectator at the dime museum. This distinctly American phenomenon was unprecedented in both the diversity of its amusements and in its democratic appeal, with audiences traversing the boundaries of ethnicity, gender, and class. Andrea Stulman Dennett's Weird and The Dime Museum in America recaptures this ephemeral and scarcely documented institution of American culture from the margins of history.
Weird and Wonderful chronicles the evolution of the dime museum from its eighteenth-century inception as a "cabinet of curiosities" to its death at the hands of new amusement technologies in the early twentieth century. From big theaters which accommodated audiences of three thousand to meager converted storefronts exhibiting petrified wood and living anomalies, this study vividly reanimates the array of museums, exhibits, and performances that make up this entertainment institution. Tracing the scattered legacy of the dime museum from vaudeville theater to Ripley's museum to the talk show spectacles of today, Dennett makes a significant contribution to the history of American popular entertainment.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Museology

200 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1997

About the author

Andrea Stulman Dennett has been an adjunct professor at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University since 1977; she teaches undergraduates, graduate students and honors students. Before completing her Ph.D in performance studies, she was a working actress and trained with The American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and attended a one-year program with The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.




http://www.liu.edu/CWPost/Academics/F...

Reviews

[Kay · Rating 3 out of 5]

The 19th-/early 20th-century phenomenon of the Dime Museum is the subject of this mostly straight-on history. Unlike other books dealing with curious spectacles (such as James Taylor's Shocked and Amazed! and Ricky Jay's Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women), this is less an examination of sideshow performers and more a look at the role of popular entertainment in American history.

Of course, we still have Ripley's Believe It or Not! exhibits at seaside towns and such, but the day of the Dime Museum is long gone. This book looks at the significant role these institutions played in the days before radios, television, and other forms of entertainment usurped our imaginations.

[Thomas Mackie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This provides a great deal of insight into the commercial traditions of Museums and the often irrational desire of many to make museum more sustainable. That seems to be an expression to make museums for-profit as the dime museums were in the late 19th century. The technique was a consistent failure in business and failed to provide a democratic public history experience.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 (it's a little dry). Dennett, a theater historian, shows how early American museum attempts — collectors exhibiting their knicks and knacks for an admission fee — never really caught on. Then came P.T. Barnum: he wasn't the first but he showed how to turn an exhibition into a pop culture phenomenon with a mix of interesting exhibits (constantly refreshed), a lot of hype and a whole ton of lies (like an elderly black woman he claimed had been George Washington's nanny. Equally important, he kept the entertainment wholesome enough for women and families.
Over time the dime museums expanded to include freak shows, waxworks, legitimate theater, novelty acts and early film shorts, thereby seeding the ground for vaudeville, carnie sideshows and nickelodeons. Eventually the dime museum's children proved more popular, though the fascination lived on in things like Ripley's Believe It Or Not.

[Erica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fabulous work of U.S. history. This book gives a detailed portrait of not just dime museums in America, but urban culture and the evolving interests in "amusements" throughout the 19th century. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in 19th century urban life.

[Magdalena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great source of valuable research!

[Kristi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dime museums, which offered a variety of amusement for one ticket price, originated in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and experienced the height of their popularity in the latter half of the 19th century after the Civil War. Dime Museum exhibitions were not about authenticity; illusions, hoaxes and humbuggery were common and anticipated, creating an intellectually gratifying activity for visitors to investigate. Based on the principles of variety and the stimulation of curiosity, exhibits aspired to the weird and wonder inspiring – including curiosities, menageries, theaters, and “freak” shows – which could be terrifying, exotic, and titillating, even sexually erotic; most often exploiting a sense of “otherness.” Experiential and multisensory in nature, sophisticated exhibitions included textured experiences highlighting the visual, but also combining sound, live performers, and even auto-matronics .
Dime Museums were motivated by profit and relied on ticket sales, and many “freak” performers were financially successful and earned great celebrity. Nevertheless, some dime museums purported to be educative, though most rarely were. Still, some dime Museum entrepreneurs, such as P.T. Barnum, were social reformers, and temperance was a popular cause within the museums. Varying in size and quality, dime museums were “democratic” in the sense that the museums were frequented by all social classes and ages, Dime Museums were predominantly urban places (with the greatest proliferation in NYC), but also traveled. Miles Kimball and PT Barnum are two of the most notable and influential Dime Museum entrepreneurs.
Dime Museums declined with the advent of the circus, movie industry and amusement parks at the turn of the twentieth century, to be briefly revived during the Great Depression in the form of Ripley’s “Believe It or Not.” Cultural vestiges remain in popular attraction to fear, thrill, and horror, as well as in voyeuristic experiences, such as those offered by reality television.