The Barnum's museum was an extraordinary sight for the visitors to come. It displays a lot exhibition of arts and sciences. Moreover, with a cheap entrance fee of twenty-five cents, a lot of different groups could attend to the museum. Barnum tried his best to provide a peaceful and safe milieu for his visitors while they're at his place. In his museum, he had a small group of five to six people to patrol the building for any signs of technical as well as incidental problems.
In a letter to his insurance company, Barnum assured that his place are fully protected and
water-proofed; and that even in a case of fire, no threat would be posed against his secured
building. Aside from laying plan to guarantee the safety of his museum and visitors, Barnum made
his place well-known by appealing and advertising his works to the people. During this time, the
industries in the north increased dramatically, and Barnum's museum was a convenient place to
entertain the people in the weekend. Barnum not only targeted the working male, but he also
brilliantly planned to capture and draw the attention from the female, particularly the wives in the
families. In this period, the female, though did not have any rights in the society, played an
important role in the family. They raised the children, took care of the housework, and sometime
aided the husbands in making the decisions. Knowing that if he could somehow persuade the wives to
think that his museum was a perfect place to go to, Barnum would surely get more visitors to
come. Therefore, Barnum opened more educational programs such as Shakespeare's plays in the lecture
room. He also eliminated bad influence by restricting violent and rude behavior in his museum to
encourage more females to come. Among his policies, perhaps the things that attracted the visitors
more were his exhibition of various rare items. For instance, the famous "freejee marmaid" was the
main attraction in his museum. The object was not only hideous to look at, but it was also
intriguing at the same time. Barnum made this object more poppular among the crowd by publicly
challenged any scientists about its fakery. He hired a man to claim as a British natrualist who
discovered the mermaid, and allowed newsman to take picture and examine the object. The public
witnessed the hot debate between Barnum and the scientists and became curious to check out the
mermaid for themselves. In a sense, Barnum's museum not only contained some never-seen-before
objects, but it also provided the controversies as well. As a result, more visitors came to his
museum.
The label for the exhitbit very much remained neutral in its tone of describing that object. It
said that the original owner of the FeJee Mermaid claimed that he caught it alive, and its appreance
were as closely similiar to those that being sold in the market. On the other hand, the label
informed that many scientist had disproved the object to be realistic, and the FeJee Marmaid could
be entirely authentic and man-made. In general, the label did not try to persuade the viewers to
believe whether the object is real or not; but rather, the label encourged the viewers to think the
object, if it was an art made by human, as a piece of art. At the same time, if the object was
real, then the viewers should agree that it is the "Greatest Curiosity in the World". The decision
would be entirely base on the viewers.