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Voici la splendide publication de l’exposition « Place au cirque! » présentée du 13 octobre 2021 au 6 mars 2022 au Musée Pointe-à-Callière qui propose une fabuleuse aventure à travers l’histoire des arts du cirque d’hier et d’aujourd’hui au Québec. Cette passionnante incursion dévoile page après page un sensible hommage aux familles et compagnies de cirque qui ont bâti les esthétiques uniques des arts du cirque québécois qui a conquis les cœurs des spectateurs à travers le monde.

Who Was P. T. Barnum?

- The mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut
- One of the founders of the Barnum & Bailey Circus
- An American showman who promoted the Greatest Show on Earth
- All of the above!

Ladies and Gentlemen, children of all ages, step right up for Who HQ’s entertaining biography of P. T. Barnum: politician, businessman, and The Greatest Showman on Earth!

After moving from Connecticut to New York City in 1834, twenty-four-year-old Phineas Taylor Barnum launched his now-legendary career as a showman. Even though spectators debated whether his exhibitions were authentic wonders, hoaxes, or a little bit of both, they were always astounded by what they saw. And readers are sure to be amazed by the story of how Barnum went from owning a museum filled with rare and unusual items to transforming the American circus into a popular and thrilling phenomenon.

This beautiful book charts the development of the circus as an art form around the world, from antiquity to the present day.

Using over 200 circus related artworks from the French National Library's private collections, celebrated cultural historian Pascal Jacob tells the story of travelling entertainers and their art and trade. From nomadic animal tamers of the Dark Ages to European jugglers and acrobats of the 1800s, from the use of the circus as Soviet propaganda to the 20th-century Chinese performance art renaissance, this is an exhaustive history with a uniquely international scope.

Jacob draws on both rare and famous artworks, including prints dating from the 13th century, and paintings by Picasso and Doré. In doing so he demonstrates the circus to be a visual and physical masterpiece, constantly moving and evolving, and just as exciting an experience for audiences now as it was 1,000 years ago.

The nineteenth century saw the American circus move from a reviled and rejected form of entertainment to the “Greatest Show on Earth.” Circus Life by Micah D. Childress looks at this transition from the perspective of the people who owned and worked in circuses and how they responded to the new incentives that rapid industrialization made possible.
The circus has long been a subject of fascination for many, as evidenced by the millions of Americans that have attended circus performances over many decades since 1870, when the circus established itself as a truly unique entertainment enterprise. Yet the few analyses of the circus that do exist have only examined the circus as its own closed microcosm—the “circus family.” Circus Life, on the other hand, places circus employees in the larger context of the history of US workers and corporate America. Focusing on the circus as a business-entertainment venture, Childress pushes the scholarship on circuses to new depths, examining the performers, managers, and laborers’ lives and how the circus evolved as it grew in popularity over time. Beginning with circuses in the antebellum era, Childress examines changes in circuses as gender balances shifted, industrialization influenced the nature of shows, and customers and crowds became increasingly more middle-class.
As a study in sport and social history, Childress’s account demonstrates how the itinerant nature of the circus drew specific types of workers and performers, and how the circus was internally in constant upheaval due to the changing profile of its patrons and a changing economy. [editor summary]

For more than fifty years, Phineas T. Barnum embodied all that was grand and fraudulent in American mass culture. Over the course of a life that spanned the nineteenth century (1810-91), he inflicted himself upon a surprisingly willing public in a variety of guises, from newspaper editor (or libeler) to traveling showman (or charlatan) and distinguished public benefactor (or shameless hypocrite)." "Barnum deliberately cultivated his ambiguous public image through a lifelong advertising campaign, shrewdly exploiting the cultural and technological capabilities of the new publishing industry. While running his numerous shows and exhibitions, Barnum managed to publish newspaper articles, exposes of fraud (not his own), self-help tracts, and a series of best-selling autobiographies, each promising to give "the true history of my many adventures."