Life, Death, Evolution, and Blackness at Barnum’s American Museum

Abstract: Focused on the “What Is It?” exhibit displayed in P. T. Barnum’s American Museum, this article draws on scholarship from performance studies, Black studies, and the histories of medicine and science to theorize what we miss when we focus primarily on mainstream white audience reactions to historical performances. By contextualizing the exhibit via discussions of early evolutionary theories, taxidermy, and natural history, as well as avenues of agency such as trickster figures and performance/audience response, it argues that the actor’s performance both embodied and refuted racist scientific beliefs prevalent in the mid-nineteenth century. Barnum’s What Is It? exhibit forced visitors to not only ask themselves whether the exhibit was real, but to think upon the futures offered to nineteenth-century America in a land where organisms, beliefs, and ideas that should have been long dead persisted and remained ready to accompany the nation in whatever direction it chose to move forward.