Madness and Joy!

Madness and Joy! explores the legacies of Whitman and Barnum, two 19th century New York City icons. PT Barnum is widely known for his Barnum & Bailey Circus, a venture he undertook late in life–but the “prince of humbugs” was also the father of modern advertising, an architect of the society of spectacle, and a chief proponent of moral suasion. Whitman, now considered among the greatest of American poets, was a transient printer and journalist in his day whose intense inner life, revealed in his poems, echoes our modern yearning for unfettered democracy, unconditional love, and reconnection with life, place, and the natural world.