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TRANSCRIPT
The golden age of the American circus (1870s–1930s) coincided
with an era of modernization and mobility, most notably the
expansion of the railroad. Although the circus in this country
long predated the railroad—first making its appearance in 1792,
when the Scottish equestrian acrobat John Bill Ricketts opened
a riding school in Philadelphia—it was the railroad that allowed
the American circus to grow in geographic reach, scale, and elab-
orateness. The joining of Union Pacific and Central Pacific rails at
Promontory Point, Utah, in 1869 opened the door to enterprising
(and opportunistic) circus men such as P. T. Barnum to manage
the complex logistics of the big-top circus of the 1920s and 1930s,
thus growing their businesses in popularity and grandiosity.
From the 1930s until 1970, in his Amarillo, Texas, home
and workshop, W. J. “Windy” Morris sought to capture this
railroad circus of his youth in miniature. What started as a
single circus wagon eventually grew into a model circus that
consists of tens of thousands of pieces and occupies a footprint
of nearly 11 by 14 feet.
The Morris Miniature Circus was acquired by the Museum
of International Folk Art in 1984 and was last shown in 1986,
to tremendous popular response. Now, thirty years later, the
museum is reinstalling the circus after doing some much-
needed restoration to the ³⁄8-inch-scale figures and wagons and
replacing motors, gears, and lights that have long since failed.
The better-than-ever circus will be on view April 3 through
December 31, 2016.
Windy Morris’s circus required him to learn as he went,
acquiring skills such as mold making, casting, painting, and
the operation of model railroads. He enlisted the help of
his wife, Josephine, to make the tents and wasn’t shy about
co-opting the home oven to bake his “little people” in their
molds. His daughter Jo Ellett recalled in 1986 how his various
work spaces became filled to capacity with his hobby—first
the home basement, then the living room, and finally a dedi-
cated workshop. “Working with as many diverse elements
as the project entailed meant that numerous processes were
on-going, simultaneously,” she wrote. “With such a mélange
(literally, thousands of tiny parts and intricate models at
various stages of completion) scattered about, no one could
envision what the end result might be, except Windy, the
artist with the master plan in his own mind’s eye.”
Morris demonstrated the same do-it-yourself tenacity he
devoted to the miniature circus in whatever he did—in life
and business. He was born in 1904 in Bentonville, Arkansas,
to a father who was a one-time town mayor and co-owner of a
lime quarry, and a mother who was the church organist. When
his father became disabled in an accident at the quarry, young
Windy shouldered much of the onus to support the family.
The carefree days of his childhood, including memorable visits
to the circus when it came through town, were replaced by
adult responsibilities. At the age of fourteen, Morris attempted
to enlist in the army at the outbreak of World War I but was
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The Morris Miniature Circus: Return of the Little Big TopBY LAURA ADDISON
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rebuffed because of his age. He worked hard to
finance his education, then started a farming
business with his father-in-law despite a lack of
experience in agriculture, teaching himself how
to repair a tractor with a manual and imple-
menting new methods in farming that he gleaned
from research. Creating a miniature circus was a
welcome respite, especially during the long winter
months, when farm activity came to a halt.
In an unpublished manuscript that he wrote in
1950, Windy Morris recalled “the brightly deco-
rated circus wagons” with teams of horses “fitted
with plumes and wagons with flags” in the street
parade that preceded the actual circus, a teaser to
the crowds who gathered to witness the arrival
of the circus. The street parade, after all, was
free, and not everyone could afford admission to
the big top. The spectacle of the parade, with its
wagons, bands, performers, and menageries of
wild animals, the unloading of the trains, and the
raising of the tents, was something to behold. “Some observer,”
said Morris, “wrote that the ‘second greatest show on earth’ is
the moving and transporting of ‘The Greatest Show on Earth.’”
To re-create the circus, Windy Morris mined his personal
memories but also researched wagons, performers and perfor-
mances, circus banners, tents, and railroads in great detail.
He participated in the national Circus Model Builders associa-
tion, writing a piece for their publication Billboard, and made a
pilgrimage to the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin,
to see their collection of circus wagons. His miniature side-
show banners, for example, are based on real-life banners of
well-known performers such as Sealo the Seal Boy and the
Great Lorenzo. Details such as the design of the famous Two
Hemisphere Circus Wagon or the Model T were of great impor-
tance to Morris to establish the time period of his circus, as they
are to all circus-model builders and model-railroad enthusi-
asts. “[My father] envisioned an authentic working model, true
to scale and handcrafted in detail,” Morris’s younger daughter,
Susie Chambers, recalled recently. “His workshop was orga-
nized; he was skillful and disciplined. But it was his creative
spirit combined with his love for the circus that brought the
Morris Miniature Circus to life.”
W. J. “Windy” Morris with his replica of the famous Barnum Two Hemisphere Circus Wagon. Museum of
International Folk Art Archives (Exhibitions Collection, Morris Miniature Circus Series AR.00004.117).
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The first iteration of Morris’s Miniature Circus took about
fifteen years to complete. He traveled it to several destinations,
such as state fairs in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Minne-
sota, in the 1940s. Subsequently, he expanded and refined
the circus but never showed it again other than to family and
friends. Its permanent home became a workshop behind the
house in Amarillo. At a certain point, the scale of this hobby-
turned-enterprise became overwhelming even to Morris.
As he wrote in his booklet: “The only drudgery encountered
was making sufficient numbers of the same items to make
the model complete. Molding, painting and harnessing one
team of horses was fun, 19 hours of it,
but finishing 135 horses grew into a task.
Making a few little people was fun but
finishing some 1600 of them was some-
thing else.”
The American railroad circus has
been subjected to many critiques over
the years, among them the exoticizing
of racial difference, narrow-minded atti-
tudes toward physical disabilities that are
evident in the “freak show,” and the abuse
of circus animals. Morris’s work reflects
his joyful memories of the circus, but
hindsight allows us to read the dark side
of circus spectacle in what we see. The
entrance to the sideshow tent boasts of
the “Living Wonders” and “Strange People
from all Corners of the Earth” to be seen
within, while at the same time peddling
the sideshow as a “Clean Moral Exhibit
of Unusual Sights.” Such language illus-
trates how sensationalism and insistence
on morality coexisted in the American
circus. At the same time that some indi-
viduals were exploited for profit based on
race, nationality, disability, or some other
measure of difference, the circus business
attempted to position itself as the arbiter
of morality, providing an atmosphere of
wholesome family fun even as it grappled
with a deserved reputation for bringing
crime and violence to town.
The Morris Miniature Circus gives us
occasional hints of the social ills of the era.
Besides what is now seen as the blatant sensationalism of the
sideshow, Morris’s circus accurately reflects the racial segre-
gation of the circus audience under the big top, evidence of
Jim Crow–era discrimination that he took care to represent in
miniature. A clear delineation is made in the stands between
the white audience and the black audience. Just one spectator
breaches the line—a white nun who sits among the African
Americans in the audience in defiance of laws that extended
everywhere, including the circus. Social criticism seems not
to have been Morris’s objective. What is certain is that when
visiting the Morris Miniature Circus, each generation of PHOT
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viewers will bring its own memories, anecdotes, and assess-
ments of the American circus. Visitors will be invited to share
these stories and thoughts in the exhibition gallery, thus
adding another chapter to the evolving narrative of the circus.
Installing the Morris Miniature Circus will be nearly as
much of a feat as it is to put up a full-size circus. Many agile
fingers will install seven small tents—including the big top,
the menagerie, the dressing rooms, the dining area, and the
sideshows—by tethering fine, waxed-linen thread to nails on
the platform. Hundreds of little people and animals need to be
placed and secured without knocking over those tents—among
them one small boy peering under a tent, said to be a portrait
of the artist himself as a boy. The fragile circus wagons will be
repaired now that the decades-old adhesive has deteriorated.
LED lights will take the place of old, burned-out bulbs with
brittle wiring, and a new motor with customized gears will run
the mechanized street parade, performing seals, a circus hand
driving tent stakes, and two men fixing their Model T. This
work will be accomplished by a team of museum staff, consul-
tants, and volunteers, all looking to honor the legacy of Windy
Morris by bringing his circus back to town. ■
Laura Addison is the curator of European and American folk art collections at the Museum of International Folk Art. The Morris Miniature Circus opens on April 3, 2016, with “The Greatest Reception on Earth,” featuring performances by Wise Fool New Mexico.