Wax Museums

Well before Madame Tussaud's artistic brilliance came onto the London art scene in the late 1700s, societies used waxworks to immortalize their culture and the deceased. Historians trace the earliest forms of wax figures to around 3000 B.C.E., in what is now modern India. Egyptians used the wax effigy as a way to retain the soul of the person after death. The Greeks and Romans used wax effigies in funeral processions and particularly for displaying prominent political figures of the time. Early, and to some extent contemporary, Christians often used wax figures to depict iconic people, such as Jesus and Mary. This entry examines the history of the contemporary wax museum [Page 988]and the functions of the contemporary wax museum in modern society.

Although the contemporary wax museum does not serve the religious or spiritual functions it once did, it still has significant social, cultural, historical, and political functions for society. The content and meaning of the wax statue in contemporary society has changed since the times of death masks and the religious offerings of wax figures during the Middle Ages. However, the wax museum—the medium for displaying waxworks in contemporary society—still immortalizes the deceased and crystallizes pieces of its society's history and culture.

Madame Tussaud and the Contemporary Wax Museum

Modern wax museums evolved from the traveling wax curators of Britain's Victorian Age. Like the state fair of today, the traveling display gave the general public an opportunity to view famous people they had only heard or read about. As a form of entertainment, Phillipe Curtius, Madame Tussaud's mentor, initially designed his wax displays for the elite, and as an opportunity for the public to interact with people they would not normally meet. Wax museums allowed the wealthy to pretend they were a guest of some royal figure or famous celebrity. For example, one of Curtius's most popular attractions was the representation of King Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette holding a dinner party, where the public could pay their entrance fee and sit with royalty.

Today, the name Madame Tussaud is synonymous with wax figures. Born Marie Grosholz in 1761, in Strasborg, France, she became an assistant to Phillipe Curtius, from whom she learned wax modeling. Tussaud knew many of the leading figures of pre-Revolutionary Paris and indeed was invited to live at the Royal Court in Versailles to be the art tutor to King Louis XVI's sister. Her sympathies toward the king led to her incarceration during the Revolution, and she was forced to make death masks of the royalty she once adored. After her release, she returned to work for Curtius and inherited his collection of waxworks after his death in 1794. In 1802, she went to London and, prevented from returning to France by the Napoleonic Wars, exhibited her waxworks collection throughout Great Britain and Ireland.

Madame Tussaud's attractions are particularly adept at appealing to the local culture, while also providing the opportunity to see wax figures of people from around the world. The London collection houses figures of British royalty and politicians, but also includes figures such as Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso, while the Las Vegas collection houses the Blue Man Group as well as popular sports icons and movie stars.

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