‘Jenny Lind’ Summer Exhibit Extended Again

BRIDGEPORT — A request from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has prompted The Barnum Museum to extend the length of its current exhibition, “P.T. Barnum Presents the Divine Jenny Lind,” until December 3.

The exhibit, which celebrates the 150th anniversary of the “Swedish Nightingale’s” 1850 American concert tour, sponsored by P.T. Barnum, opened in April.

Curator Kathleen Maher explained, “The Barnum Museum has been asked by the American decorative arts department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to extend the length of our Jenny Lind exhibit because it will be listed as a related exhibition venue to enhance the Met’s exhibition, ‘The Empire City: New York, 1826-1861,’ which will open in September.”

The Metropolitan also will promote The Barnum Museum’s re-created library from Iranistan, P.T. Barnum’s 1847 country villa, as a premier American decorative arts period room. Reconstructed from period description, the room is furnished with the original Jules Dessoir suite from the Iranistan House, which was destroyed by fire in 1857.

The library room, located on the museum’s first floor, contains furniture designed and created by Dessoir’s New York cabinet making firm. In the mid-1800s, the Dessoir firm was housed at 499 North Broadway, a short distance from Barnum’s American Museum at Broadway and Ann Street.

The burl and curly maple suite was adapted from Chinese-style design by Thomas Chippendale and donated to Bridgeport Scientific Society and Fairfield County Historical Society in 1888 by Barnum and his second wife, Nancy Fish Barnum. The 1893 museum building was designed by Barnum to house the two societies.

Barnum Museum hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10 am to 4:30 pm, and Sunday from noon to 4:30 pm. Admission is $5 for adults, and $4 for senior citizens and college students, and $3 for children 4 and older. Call 203/331-1104 for more information or to schedule group tours.