by Tamera Lenz Muente, Curator
Visitors to the Taft Museum of Art can see three marble portrait busts sculpted in the early 1870s by Hiram Powers (1805–1873), who was at that time America’s most famous sculptor. In his studio in Florence, Italy, Powers created dignified, accurate likenesses of wealthy subjects including Alphonso Taft, David Sinton, and Anna Sinton Taft. Who would guess that Powers had created the nation’s most notorious shock-and-horror show at Cincinnati’s Western Museum four decades earlier?
Dr. Daniel Drake established the Western Museum as a serious scientific institution in 1820, which is the same year that Martin Baum built the home that would later become the Taft Museum of Art. At the museum’s opening, Drake declared, “Let the architects of our national greatness conform to the dictates of science.” A poem to honor the museum’s second anniversary proclaimed:
"Great Genius of Science! we ask thy direction
In guiding our footsteps in every pursuit:
Man is raised to an angel beneath thy protection,
And, without it, is sunk to a savage or brute."
Despite its lofty ideals, the museum encountered financial distress by 1823, and its founders transferred ownership to the curator, Joseph Dorfeuille, a man of science with a mysterious background. Dorfeuille catered to the public’s fascination with the sensational and the macabre to turn the museum into a commercial success. Although he continued the museum’s science lectures and kept the displays of natural specimens, fossils, and antiquities, he added dubious objects, including a “mermaid” and the supposed preserved head of a local murderer.
The year before the Western Museum opened, 14-year-old Hiram Powers moved from Vermont with his parents and siblings to a farm outside Cincinnati. Soon, malaria claimed his father and left Powers too weak for farm work. Powers’s older brother, who ran a newspaper in Cincinnati, found him a job managing a hotel reading room, where, for fun, Powers made cut-out portraits of people from old papers. He next worked for a grocer, passing his downtime by carving butter into grotesque creatures to surprise customers who opened the butter barrels.
Powers soon met organ- and clockmaker Luman Watson, who hired the young man to polish organ stops and collect debts. Watson noticed Powers’s innate talent for mechanics and took him into his household. Powers quickly began improving Watson’s machinery, fixing problems his more experienced workers could not. He helped build organs for two museums: Letton’s, and its competitor, the Western Museum. On the side, he began modeling portraits and learning plaster casting.
Meanwhile, Dorfeuille was adding wax figures to the Western Museum’s repertoire. When a shipment of figures from New Orleans arrived damaged, Powers was recommended to repair them. Upon examination, they were so badly broken that the two agreed to cobble the parts into something new. Powers transformed the head of one of the figures into “The King of the Cannibal Islands,” puffing out the cheeks and adding alligator tusks. Two days later, he discovered posters around the city advertising the display of an actual embalmed body of a South Seas cannibal at the Western Museum. Mortified by this falsehood, Powers confronted Dorfeuille. The public never complained, however, and the new addition became quite popular. Powers’s ability to make wax figures that appeared alive led to Dorfeuille hiring him as, in Powers’s words, “inventor, wax-figure maker, and general mechanical contriver.”
In 1828, Powers began work on a spectacular display for Dorfeuille: a terrifying interpretation of hell as described in Dante’s Divine Comedy and Milton’s Paradise Lost. Initially, Powers startled spectators by walking through the crowd disguised as a demon, wearing a dark robe and a lobster claw for a nose. He then invented figures that first moved on pulleys; later, he fully automated them. Eventually, thirty figures populated the show, consisting of what an advertisement described as “phantoms, imps, monsters, devils . . . with a variety of human sufferers in every stage of mental and bodily torment.” Visitors could view this chamber of horrors, billed as “the only exhibition of the kind in the United States,” for twenty-five cents.
Many accounts of the Infernal Regions appear in writings from the period. The English author Frances Trollope lived in Cincinnati from 1828 to 1830 and published her observations in her travelogue Domestic Manners of the Americans. She wrote, “Cincinnati has not many lions to boast,” but applauded Dorfeuille’s museum, stating that he had built: “a pandemonium in an upper story of his museum, in which he has congregated all the images of horror that his fertile fancy could devise; dwarfs that by machinery grow into giants before the eyes of the spectator; imps of ebony with eyes of flame; monstrous reptiles devouring youth and beauty; lakes of fire, and mountains of ice. . . . All contribute to make ‘Dorfeuille’s Hell’ one of the most amusing exhibitions imaginable.”
Hiram Powers worked at the Western Museum for about seven years. His Infernal Regions became a must-see for locals and visitors to Cincinnati. Dorfeuille had promised Powers a share in the business, but in an interview late in his life, Powers recollected, “He knew I kept no accounts; but he did not know that I reported all the money he gave me to my wife, who did keep our accounts. He tried to cheat me; but I was able to baffle him through her prudence and method.”
Nicholas Longworth (former resident of the house that is now the Taft Museum of Art) saw Powers’s potential and offered financial assistance. In 1834, with Longworth’s help, Powers left Cincinnati to seek portrait commissions in Washington, D.C. There, Powers modeled portraits of President Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, and Chief Justice John Marshall. As his career as a respected portrait sculptor took off, Powers vowed to “make truth my model and guide in all my future undertakings,” leaving behind the fantastical creations of his youth.
Taft Museum of Art ni makumbusho ya sanaa ya Marekani iliyojengwa na Hiram Powers (1805-1873) ambaye alikuwa mchongaji maarufu zaidi wa Marekani. Katika studio yake huko Florence, Italia, Powers aliunda picha zenye heshima, sahihi za watu matajiri kutia ndani Alphonso Taft, David Sinton, na Anna Sinton Taft. Ni nani angeweza kudhani kwamba Powers alikuwa ameunda show ya taifa yenye sifa mbaya zaidi ya mshtuko na hofu katika Jumba la Makumbusho la Magharibi la Cincinnati miongo minne mapema? "Daniel Drake alianzisha ""Western Museum"" mwaka 1820 na Martin Baum akajenga nyumba ambayo baadaye ikawa Jumba la Makumbusho la Taft." Katika ufunguzi wa makumbusho, Drake alitangaza, "Hebu wasanifu wa ukuu wetu wa kitaifa kufuata maagizo ya sayansi". Shairi la kuheshimu maadhimisho ya miaka miwili ya makumbusho lilitangaza: "Genius Mkuu wa Sayansi! """Tunaomba mwongozo wako katika kuongoza hatua zetu katika kila kufuatilia: Mtu huinuliwa kuwa malaika chini ya ulinzi wako, na bila hiyo, huanguka kuwa mwitu au mnyama.""" Kwa sababu ya mawazo yake ya juu, makumbusho hayo yalipatwa na matatizo ya kifedha kufikia mwaka wa 1823, na waanzilishi wake wakamkabidhi Joseph Dorfewell, mkurugenzi wa makumbusho hayo, ambaye alikuwa mwana sayansi mwenye historia isiyoeleweka. Dorfeuille alilenga kuvutia umma na sensational na macabre kugeuka makumbusho katika mafanikio ya kibiashara. Ingawa aliendelea na hotuba za sayansi za jumba hilo la makumbusho na kuweka maonyesho ya sampuli za asili, visukuku, na vitu vya kale, aliongeza vitu visivyo na uhakika, ikiwa ni pamoja na "msichana wa baharini" na kichwa cha muuaji wa mahali hapo. Mwaka mmoja kabla ya kufunguliwa kwa Jumba la Makumbusho la Magharibi, Hiram Powers mwenye umri wa miaka 14 alihamia kutoka Vermont pamoja na wazazi wake na ndugu zake kwenye shamba nje ya Cincinnati. Punde si punde, malaria ilimwangamiza baba yake na kumfanya Powers awe dhaifu sana asiweze kufanya kazi ya shambani. Ndugu yake mkubwa, ambaye alikuwa na gazeti huko Cincinnati, alimpatia kazi ya kusimamia chumba cha kusoma cha hoteli, ambapo Powers alitengeneza picha za watu kutoka kwa karatasi za zamani. Alifanya kazi katika duka la vyakula, na wakati wake wa kupumzika aliitumia kuchonga siagi katika viumbe visivyo vya kawaida ili kuwavutia wateja waliofungua mapipa ya siagi. Punde si punde, Powers alikutana na mtengenezaji wa ala na saa Luman Watson, ambaye alimwajiri kijana huyo kupaka rangi vituo vya ala na kukusanya madeni. Watson aliona kipawa cha Powers cha asili cha ufundi na kumchukua katika nyumba yake. Powers alianza haraka kuboresha mashine za Watson, akisuluhisha matatizo ambayo wafanyakazi wake wenye uzoefu zaidi hawangeweza. Alisaidia kujenga vyombo kwa ajili ya majumba mawili ya makumbusho: Letton's, na mshindani wake, Jumba la Makumbusho la Magharibi. Pande hiyo, alianza kutengeneza picha za watu na kujifunza kutengeneza plastiki. Wakati huohuo, Dorfeuille alikuwa akiongeza sanamu za nta kwenye orodha ya Makumbusho ya Magharibi. Meli ya sanamu kutoka New Orleans ilipowasili ikiwa imeharibiwa, Powers alipendekezwa kuirekebisha. Walipochunguza, zilikuwa zimevunjika sana hivi kwamba hao wawili walikubaliana kuunganisha sehemu hizo na kutengeneza kitu kipya. Powers alibadilisha kichwa cha mmoja wa sanamu hizo kuwa "Mfalme wa Visiwa vya Cannibal", akivuta mashavu na kuongeza meno ya mamba. Siku mbili baadaye, alipata mabango kote mjini akitangaza maonyesho ya mwili halisi wa mnyama wa baharini wa Bahari za Kusini katika Jumba la Makumbusho la Magharibi. Akiwa amechoshwa na uwongo huo, Powers alimkabili Dorfeuille. Hata hivyo, watu hawakulalamika kamwe, na jengo hilo jipya likawa maarufu sana. "Kwa sababu ya uwezo wake wa kutengeneza sanamu za nta, Dorfewil alimwajiri kuwa ""mvumbuzi, mtengenezaji wa sanamu za nta, na mtengenezaji wa vifaa vya kawaida"" na akaanza kufanya kazi kwa ajili ya ""Dorfewil,"" tafsiri ya kutisha ya kuzimu kama ilivyoelezwa katika Dante's Divine Comedy na Milton's Paradise Lost." Mwanzoni, Powers aliwatisha watazamaji kwa kutembea katikati ya umati akiwa amevalia mavazi ya giza na kunyoa la kamba-mti kwa ajili ya pua. Kisha akabuni sanamu ambazo kwanza zilihamishwa kwa kutumia magurudumu; baadaye, akazifanya ziwe za kiotomatiki kabisa. Hatimaye, takwimu thelathini zilijaa onyesho hilo, ikiwa ni pamoja na kile tangazo lilielezea kama <unk>phantoms, imps, monsters, devils. . . "Watalii wanaweza kuona chumba hiki cha vitisho, kilichoitwa ""maonyesho pekee ya aina hiyo nchini Marekani,"" kwa senti ishirini na tano." Masimulizi mengi kuhusu Maeneo ya Kuzimu yanaonekana katika maandishi ya wakati huo. Frances Trollope aliishi Cincinnati kuanzia mwaka wa 1828 hadi 1830 na kuchapisha maelezo yake katika kitabu chake cha safari Domestic Manners of the Americans. "Alichanganya ""Cincinnati haina simba wengi wa kujisifu nao"" lakini alipongeza jumba la makumbusho la Dorfoyle, akisema kwamba alikuwa amejenga ""pandemonium katika ghorofa ya juu ya jumba lake la makumbusho, ambapo amekusanya picha zote za kutisha ambazo fancy yake ya uzazi inaweza kubuni; dwarfs ambazo kwa mashine hukua kuwa majitu mbele ya macho ya mtazamaji; imps ya ebony na macho ya moto; reptili za kutisha zinazokula vijana na uzuri.""" . . . Yote yanachangia kufanya <unk>Dorfeuille<unk>s Hell<unk> moja ya maonyesho ya kufurahisha zaidi inayoweza kuwaziwa. <unk> Hiram Powers alifanya kazi katika Jumba la Makumbusho la Magharibi kwa miaka saba hivi. Maeneo yake ya kuzimu yakawa mahali pa lazima pa kuona kwa wenyeji na wageni wa Cincinnati. "Dorfewil alikuwa ameahidi Powers sehemu katika biashara, lakini katika mahojiano mwishoni mwa maisha yake, Powers alikumbuka, ""Alijua kwamba sikuweka akaunti; lakini hakujua kwamba niliripoti pesa zote alizinipa kwa mke wangu, ambaye aliweka akaunti zetu.""" Alijaribu kunidanganya; lakini niliweza kumshinda kwa busara na mbinu yake. <unk> Nicholas Longworth (mkaaji wa zamani wa nyumba ambayo sasa ni Jumba la Makumbusho la Sanaa la Taft) aliona uwezo wa Powers na kutoa msaada wa kifedha. Katika 1834, kwa msaada wa Longworth, Powers aliondoka Cincinnati kutafuta tume ya picha huko Washington, DC. Huko, Powers alichora picha za Rais Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, na Jaji Mkuu John Marshall. Alipoanza kazi yake kama mchongaji wa picha anayeheshimiwa, Powers aliahidi "kufanya ukweli uwe mfano wangu na mwongozo katika miradi yangu yote ya baadaye", akiacha nyuma uumbaji wa ajabu wa ujana wake.