Two-headed Goat

Woodcut on Awagami kitakata

There are times when the worlds of medicine and show business intersect. In this case, the specimen was not displayed in a medical museum, but a version of its downmarket cousin: the dime museum. Both displays share a common ancestry in the wunderkammer tradition, but dime museums tended to branch away from academia and toward the freakshow.

The term ‘dime museum’ was coined in the 19th-century to describe an establishment presenting a number of entertainments for one low admission price. The most famous of these — but not the first — belonged to P. T. Barnum; while the best known recent incarnation would have been Hubert's Museum — both in New York. Hubert’s closed in 1965, but the tradition lives on in smaller ventures and massive undertakings such as the Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not empire.

This two-headed goat belongs to showman John Strong. I made the original drawing for this print while visiting his sideshow in Coney Island during the summer of 2009.

[detail enlargement]