Gallery Walk “Witches, Ghosts, and Ghastly Objects: “Oddities” Revisited” by William Rasmussen

These peculiar, perplexing, or even grotesque objects provide insight into the hopes, fears, assumptions, and practices of the past that are foreign to us today. Historical items in the Bizarre Bits: Oddities from the Collection exhibition range from the bullet that killed the first Confederate officer, nails from the part of the Capitol that collapsed in 1870, a list of knights at an 1865 Virginia joust, fungus carved with the likeness of R. E. Lee on Traveller, “Junior Partner” cigarettes in their original pack featuring an image of a child, a 6,000 year old piece of wood from the Canary Islands, and a silhouette cut by an armless Virginia woman with her mouth. Personal items include pieces of James Madison’s hair, letters telling of fingernail clippings sent by a 19th century naval officer to his wife as tokens of endearment, and a smallpox scab taken from an infant in 1876.