50! Circus World Museum, Baraboo's civic treasure celebrates a milestone anniversary

Wife and husband team Virginia Tuells and Giovanni Perez show their strength and balance as they support one another in their hand-balancing act at Circus World Museum during a performance on Monday.

A century and a quarter after Baraboo’s Ringing brothers began building their circus empire and a half-century after its founding, Circus World Museum has had its ups and downs, supporters say. But on its 50th birthday the number of people coming to see live circus acts is rising and Milwaukee’s Great Circus Parade rolls again July 12.

Monday afternoon adults and children filled the Hippodrome for the museum’s classic American-style circus performance. It included aerial artist Mirna climbing high above the center ring on a single rope, then performing graceful moves as she was whirled around the dome.

Spouses Virginia Tuells and Giovanni Perez performed a hand- balancing act. Sometimes he supported her over his head, other times she held him aloft in a dazzling display of strength, flexibility and concentration.

Roger the Clown kept the audience laughing with wild slapstick including a gorilla and a karate gag in which he tries unsuccessfully to break a concrete (really foam rubber) block with his head. He drew youngsters from the audience into the act and used singing Ringmaster Robert Trader as his straight man.

In one of the culminating acts, performer Irene Franzen rode aloft on the trunk of an enormous elephant while animal trainer Brian Franzen directed the ponderous pachyderm to balance on a large ball.

The result was an avalanche of applause from the audience.

CWM is built in "Ringlingville" where the brothers, Al., Otto, Charles, John and Alf. T. Ringling, established the winter quarters for their Ringling Bros Circus, founded in 1884, said Steve Freese, CWM executive director. The Ringlings operated from Baraboo until 1918 when, having bought out the competing Barnum and Bailey Circus in 1907, they combined the shows and moved to Connecticut.

CWM is the dream realized by retired Ringling brothers attorney John M. Kelley, Freese said. He began fundraising in 1954 to create a museum in Ringlingville. Kelley’s non-profit organization bought several original Ringling buildings and on July 1, 1959, deeded CWM to the state of Wisconsin.

In subsequent years, CWM staff have built the museum’s exhibits and collected historic artifacts, including circus wagons, and documents such as circus posters, business records, film reels and photographs, Freese said. In 1959, CWM had 18 historic circus wagons.

"We were collecting these very vigorously until we came to the total of 215 circus wagons," Freese said, "that is two-thirds of all the circus wagons known to exist today."

While most CWM fans love it for the circus performances and exhibits, scholars respect it for other reasons, says Fred Pfening, a Columbus, Ohio circus historian who sits on the museum’s governing board.

"Circus World Museum has the best research library by far of any public institution in the United States," he said.

In circus history Baraboo has the importance of Chicago or Los Angeles, Pfening said. And in its 50 years CWM has grown to reflect that importance.

"If you look back (to 1959), the museum was nothing then," he said. "There’s been a lot of consistent growth over the years."

Freese said CWM has had some rough years, particularly after loss of a major funder meant 2003 was the final year for the Great Circus Parade in Milwaukee. CWM was also hurt when flooding in June 2008 inundated the museum grounds for a week.

However, in 2009 things are looking up with the return of the Great Circus Parade, he said. The Milwaukee-based group Milwaukee Circus Parade, Inc. has already forked over $1.5 million for CWM staff to restore wagons and stage the parade.

In the past CWM had 30 employees working on each year’s parade, this year it’s a dozen. "It’s been a phenomenal task," Freese said. "It goes to show the enormous talent that is here with the staff at Circus World."

In other good news, successful promotion of CWM has resulted in rising visitor attendance and income, he said.

"I think the future is bright," Freese said. "Year to date, we are up 24.1 percent in attendance compared to 2008. "We’ve been getting really positive reviews and reactions from our visitors," he added.

The Great Circus Parade will be a good thing for drawing more people to CWM, Freese said.

"We anticipate we will have reporters from around the world there at the parade filming it," he said. "And we know that there will be some national broadcasts of the parade."

Harold "Heavy" Burdick said he has been with CWM for 34 years, beginning in maintenance and rising to supervise the restoration of the circus wagons. Burdick, his employees and volunteers have worked many months restoring wagons for the parade and for the future enjoyment of museum visitors, he said.

"A lot of pride, a lot of pride for me and everybody at Circus World that’s worked diligently to get ready for this parade," he said. (The museum has) had it’s ups and downs, but I think it will always be there."

Parade director and veteran singing Ringmaster David Saloutos recalls one summer day when he was driving between a train loaded with circus wagons and a cornfield near Janesville. When he saw circus horses tied up beside the train he felt in touch with the past.

"Time melted away, you could have been in 1928," he said. "It’s bringing all these memories back and re-creating this part of history.

"That’s Baraboo’s history," Saloutos said.

Courtesy of John Goodall