saturday & sunday, april 17th & 18th
MUSEUM: THE CONGRESS FOR CURIOUS PEOPLE! $25 for the weekend Presented by Observatory and Morbid Anatomy, at and with The Coney Island Museum. Click here to purchase advance tickets. Tickets may also be purchased at the door.

The Congress for Curious People is a 2-day symposium exploring education and spectacle, collectors of curiosities, historical fairground displays and more, in conjunction with The Coney Island Museum. The symposium will feature panels of humanities scholars discussing with the audience the intricacies of collecting, the history of ethnographic display, the interface of spectacle and education, and the politics of bodily display in the amusement parks, museums, and fairs of the Western world. Also on view in the museum will be "The Collector's Cabinet," an installation of astounding artifacts held in private collections. In conjunction with the events at the Coney Island Museum, Observatory's Gallery space will host "The Secret Museum," an exhibition exploring the poetics of hidden, untouched and curious collections from around the world.

The Congress for Curious People will serve as an academic counterpoint to Coney Island's Congress of Curious Peoples, which Coney Island USA has convened since 2007 at Sideshows by the Seashore.

Saturday, 11am-12:30pm - Lectures and panel discussion - Education and Spectacle in 19th and 20th Century Amusements
Amy Herzog, author of Dreams of Difference, Songs of the Same: The Musical Moment in Film
Andrea Stulman Dennett, author of Weird and Wonderful: The Dime Museum in America
Kathy Maher, Executive Director of Barnum Museum
Eva Åhrén, author of Death, Modernity, and the Body : Sweden 1870-1940
Moderated by Elizabeth Bradley, New York Public Library

Saturday, 1pm-2:30pm - Lectures and panel discussion - Cabinets of Curiosity: Collecting Curiosities in the 21st Century.
Joe Coleman, collector and artist
Johnny Fox, collector, performer, founder of The Freakatorium
Mike Zohn, Antique and Oddity Dealer, Obscura Antiques and Oddities
Evan Michelson, Antique and Oddity Dealer, Obscura Antiques and Oddities and Morbid Anatomy Library scholar in residence
Melissa Milgrom, Author of Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy
Moderated by Aaron Beebe, Director of the Coney Island Museum

Saturday, 3pm-5pm - Lectures and panel discussion - Freaks and Monsters: The Politics of Bodily Display
Mike Chemers, author of Staging Stigma: A Critical History of the American Freak Show
Michael Sappol, Historian of the National Library of Medicine and author of A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and Embodied Social Identity in Nineteenth-Century America
Nadja Durbach, author of Spectacle of Deformity: Freak Shows and Modern British Culture
Moderated by Jennifer Miller, Bearded Lady and founder of Circus Amok

Saturday, 6pm-8pm - Drinks and light fare

Sunday, 12pm-2pm - Lectures and panel discussion – A History of Cultural Display in World’s Fairs and Sideshows
Barbara Mathé, Archivist, American Museum of Natural History
Alison Griffiths, author of Wondrous Difference: Cinema, Anthropology, and Turn of the Century Visual Culture
Lucian Gomoll, University of California at Santa Cruz
Moderated by Aaron Glass, author of The Totem Pole: An Intercultural Biography and In Search of the Hamat’sa: A Tale of Headhunting

2pm - Closing remarks

SIDESHOWS BY THE SEASHORE is located at the corner of Surf Avenue & West 12th Street in the heart of the Coney Island amusement park. THE CONEY ISLAND MUSEUM is located on the second floor of the same historic building, above the theater. THE FREAK BAR adjoins both spaces, and is connected to a GIFT SHOP in the lobby. Both the inside and the outside of our historic 1917 building are decorated in canvas sideshow banners painted by Valerie Haller or Marie Roberts. The building was originally Child's Restaurant which employed singing waiters. In the 1950's and 60's it was home to Dave Rosen's Wonderland Circus Sideshow where such legends as Sealo the Seal Boy, JoJo the Dogfaced Boy, tattooed man Jack Dracula and talker Bobby Reynolds once worked and performed. ALL VENUES are available for private rentals with or without the live sideshow performers. We have been rented for weddings, rock videos, fashion photography, etc. Please call the office at (718) 372-5159 for rental rates.