Human zoo
Videos
Human zoos, also known as ethnological expositions, was a practice of publicly displaying people. In some cases these displays were voluntary on the part of people who willingly agreed, while in other
Poster for an anthropological exhibition in Paris, c. 1870
Ad for a Carl Hagenbeck show (1886)
Ad for an 1893–1894 ethnological exposition of Sámi in Hamburg-Saint Paul
A caricature of Saartjie Baartman, called the Hottentot Venus. Born to a Khoisan family, she was displayed in European cities in the early 19th century.
Sarah Baartman
Videos
Sarah Baartman, also spelled Sara, sometimes in the Dutch diminutive form Saartje, or Saartjie, and Bartman, Bartmann, was a Khoekhoe woman who was exhibited as a freak show attraction in 19th-century
Human zoo
…exhibitions of Chang and Eng Bunker, the conjoined twins later known as the Siamese twins. Such exhibitions were common in circuses and freak shows. Saartjie Baartman, of the Nama people, was exhibited in Britain and France under the name "Hottentot Venus" until her death in 1815. During the 1850s, Maximo and Bartola…
Saartjie Baartman
La Belle Hottentote, a 19th-century French print of Baartman
Sarah Baartman's grave, on a hill overlooking Hankey in the Gamtoos River Valley, Eastern Cape, South Africa