Content area
In this dissertation, I examine the role that museums play in object preservation and exhibition, education, and in the creation and maintenance of community. Using the Burlesque Hall of Fame Museum in Las Vegas, I show how the history and practice of the burlesque performing arts genre is being transmitted, validated, and valued by the individuals who have created and maintained the museum across generations. Burlesque performance is both art and occupation. As a genre, burlesque is an immediate predecessor of contemporary stripping, which is stigmatized in the United States of America. By featuring this performance genre within a museum setting, its value as a unique art form, social history, gendered history, and profession is established. Object preservation and interpretation within in a museum is a purposeful demonstration of the worthiness of a subject’s study and appreciation. In the case of the Burlesque Hall of Fame, the museum form is a means through which American values, history, social mores, desires, and taboos may be laid bare.
Within the Burlesque Hall of Fame (BHoF), I investigate the motivations and methods of five individuals who have shaped the museum into its current form. These individuals include two 20th Century burlesque entertainers who founded and preserved the museum and its collection and the three museum professionals—the museum’s Executive Director, Curator, and Programs Manager—whose continuous work champions the artistry of the contemporary burlesque community to which they belong. At the Burlesque Hall of Fame Museum, burlesque performers have historically been arbiters of their own representation.
Today, the museum has distinct audiences, including both burlesque pilgrims and tourists from beyond the community, and these audiences have varying responses to and relationships with BHoF. Through interpretive tours and public programs, the museum helps disseminate the history, artistry, and cultural importance of this gendered American art form. I use both ethnographic and archival research methods to explore different features of the museum. Chapters are chronological, connecting the museum’s origins to its current form. Halls of Fame often spotlight significant individual contributions to an industry and each chapter here relates individuals to topics of conservation, development, interpretation, exhibits, and programs. Each chapter is further framed by folkloristic themes, including brief analyses of performance theory, occupational folklore, genre, and the curation of both museum and live cultural exhibitions. These subjects remain significant within the context of ongoing stigmatization against stripping as both a performance art and occupation.