May Wirth (1894-1978) was billed as "the world’s greatest female bareback rider."
By GLENN COLLINS
from: nytimes.com
Published: September 20, 2012
Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, direct your gaze to this thin circlet of elephant tusk from 1885. Its spidery inscription reads “Jumbo King of Elephants.” It is a relic of both the 13-foot-tall Jumbo and a lost golden age, when the circus was New York City’s most popular entertainment.
Scholars of the arts in New York have long ignored the circus in favor of the city’s theatrical, musical and literary histories. But an ambitious new exhibition aims to fill that void. “Circus and the City: New York 1793-2010,” opening on Friday at the Bard Graduate Center Galleries, chronicles the rise, triumph and ultimate fragmentation of the circus through the lens of the city, making the case that the circus transformed entertainment, media and advertising and that the city itself played an important role in the evolution of the American circus.
Circus has primarily been thought of as a global and national phenomenon,” said Matthew Wittmann, curator of the show. “But New York City was an incubator for circus since it first arrived in America.”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/nyregion/circus-and-the-city-at-bard-graduate-center-galleries.html?ref=circuses&_r=0
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