Friday, July 17, 2015

Panoptikum - Grand Musée Anatomique: Touring Historical Anatomy Museum Seeks Funding!

I have just been alerted to an exciting new touring historical anatomical museum now seeking funding. Their project description follows; you can find out more--and make a contribution!--by clicking here. You can visit them on Facebook here. Thanks so much to Morbid Anatomy Reporter at Large Eric Huang for sending this my way!
Historical Anatomy Museum
Please contribute to help preserve the historical traveling medical and anatomy museum know as Panoptikum - Grand Musée Anatomique.

The "panoptikum," a display where the exhibits surround the observer, is one of the oldest kinds of fairground attractions.

Be it a waxwork display, sideshow or a traveling museum - the panoptikum was not only entertainment but also had an educational aspect.

With today's fun-fairs, carnivals and amusement parks focused of the thrill aspects of mega-rides the classic fun-fair museum show has faded into the background and is now seldom seen .

Paradox Sideshows has resurrected the traditional traveling museum show with Panoptikum -Grand Musée Anatomique but needs help in restoring and preserving one of the last remaining inventories of an historical aanatomy and medical museum.

The approximately 200 exhibits - including medical wax models (known traditionally as moulage), medical and pathological specimens, anatomical curiosities and much more - from which the vast majority has an age of more than 80 years, are unique and rare.
In their restored and conserved status they are a historic artifacts of both the fairground and medical education.

It is all the more pleasing that these historical rarities be on public display and not - as various other pieces of this kind - in the basements of private collectors or buried in the archives of medical institutions.

In 2014 Paradox Sideshows began to again present some of these exhibits to the public at festivals and fairs.

The long-term preservation of the Panoptikum: Grand Musée Anatomique is in need of active support!

Although many of the museum exhibits are in an unusually good condition for their age there are many that need much more work for restoration and preservation. That the costly restoration can be achieved by museum admission fees alone seems unlikely..

For this reason we have decided to create fund-raising web-page, just as numerous cultural museums and companies have done, and offer the opportunity to provide financial support of a long-term existence of Panoptikum -Grand Musée Anatomique.

As important as supporting the traveling museum Panoptikum via "online crowd funding"is traditional "live crowd funding", that is to say, people visiting the museum at fairs and festivals during the season 2015 and beyond. Only in this way can this historical fairground exhibit be preserved for future generations.

The Panoptikum -Grand Musée Anatomique is presented by PARADOX SIDESHOW. As one of the last great sideshow companies in Europe, PARADOX SIDESHOW & MISTER MILLER'S SHOW preserves and presents the living tradition of classic fairground sideshows, variety entertainments and oddity exhibits. 

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