Circus Day in America

15 July 2010 - by ArtfixDaily Staff

Strobridge Litho. Co., Human Flies, 1882, chromolithograph. Collection of Shelburne Museum.

A lively exhibition at Vermont's Shelburne Museum is a multi-sensory experience celebrating Circus Day, the once-popular holiday which brought entire communities together. During the Golden Age of the American circus (1870-1950) schools closed, factories shut down, and farmers left their fields just to attend the daylong spectacle.

The four-legged girl, the dog-faced boy and the two-headed nightingale are just a few of the colorful characters who come to life through the exhibited art, artifacts, photographs and film.

The exhibit explores the development of advertising and the art of exaggeration with posters of freaks, sideshows and outlandish animals from the museum’s collection of over 500 rare posters. Also on display are performers’ costumes, a smelling station with signature scents of the circus and an installation of contemporary sideshow banners that measures 40-feet long by 17-feet high.

“Circus Day in America recreates the experience of what was the largest form of entertainment in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,” said Associate Curator Kory Rogers, who organized the exhibit. “The exhibit is a window on the colorful cast of performers who traveled the country by rail entertaining entire communities. For many of them, circus life was bittersweet. Performers took great risks and sometimes paid the ultimate price. Sideshow freaks endured the public scrutiny of onlookers.”

Also on display are two extraordinary miniature carved circuses – The Arnold Circus, which recreates a circus train with nearly 4,000 pieces stretching over 500 feet and the hand carved Kirk Bros. Circus with three rings and 3,500 figures.

Circus Day in America runs through October 24. A companion catalog to the exhibit is available.

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