A couple of years ago, I went to New York City with my family. While we were there, we decided to go to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. It has many rooms that are filled with wax figures of celebrities. You can take pictures and take pictures with the wax figures. In fact, they have themed rooms such as royalty, athletes, and Hollywood movie stars. There are about eighteen different Madame Tussaud's worldwide. A few locations of the museum is Bangkok, Vienna, and Sydney. Each museum has different wax figures, but there is always one figure who is always in every museum.
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| Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in New York, NY |
If you ever visit a Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, you may not notice the figure of a small, old lady amid the wax celebrities. But, this woman is actually the most important wax figure in the whole museum. The figure is Madame Tussaud, the woman who created the museum. Marie Grosholtz was born in 1671 in France. When she was only ten, she became the prodigy of Dr. Philippe Curtius, who was a doctor and a wax modeler. Ten years later, she became the art tutor of King Louis XVI’s sister, and she even lived in Versailles for nine years! Unfortunately, Marie was placed in prison during the French Revolution because she was associated with French royals. The only way she could avoid being executed by the guillotine was agreeing to make death masks. It was a horrible job; she had to make masks for the heads of people who had been executed by the guillotine. Sometimes, she even had to make death masks for friends. After the French Revolution, Marie married Francois Tussaud. She eventually moved to England and brought her wax figures with her. She set up a small shop, and when she died in 1850, her sons expanded her business.
Madame Tussaud is relevant to history class because recently we learned about the French Royal family, specifically King Louis XIV. Even though Madame Tussaud did not live during the years we learned about, she was born shortly after. She also was connected to to King Louis XIV’s family. Also, she lived in Versailles for a few years, and we learned about Versailles. She was able to live in one of the many rooms, along with many other people. She might have also seen the room of war, and the rooms dedicated to gods and goddesses. When I went to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, I had no idea that I would be able to connect both the museum and Madame Tussaud to history class.  |
| Madame Tussaud |
Bibliography:
“The Life of Madame Marie Tussaud.” MadameTussauds.com. http://www.madametussauds .com/SiteImages/Assets/9/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20Life%20of%20Madame%20Tussaud_4.pdf.(accessed 5 march, 2014).
“Marie Tussaud.” Encyclopedia Britannica. 11 July 2013. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked /topic/610619/Marie-Tussaud. (Accessed 6 March, 2014).
Pictures:
“Madame Tussaud.” Drawing. HistoryOrb.com. http://www.historyorb.com/birthdays/ december/7. Accessed 6 March 2014.
Morris, Nigel. “Madame Tussauds Wax Museum.” Photograph. Places Online. http://www.places online.com/north_america/united_states/new_york/new_york/photo_detail.asp?filename=36013_new_york_madame_tussauds_di_new_york. Accessed 6 March 2014.
I was interested in your post right away because I went to this museum with my family too! I never would have made this connection. I like how your writing included a lot of facts but was still interesting and relevant to our lives today.
ReplyDeleteWow, that must have been really fun to visit. I loved how you related your trip to the New York Wax Museum to history class. Your blog post was well written and made very interesting. I loved reading it, keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteI've always wanted to go to a wax museum! It's really cool how you connected the one you went to in New York with what we learned about in class. I never knew that wax figures were made that in the late 1600's, I thought they were a recent thing. Great job!
ReplyDeleteYour post was really cool and i was interested because i also went to this museum before. I would have never thought to connect it to what we are learning in history class.Great job on your post!
ReplyDeleteI went to this museum this summer so I just had to read it! I love how you were able to take an interesting museum and connected it to what we were learning. Before I had no idea who Madame Tussaud was but now I know. Great Job it was so interesting!
ReplyDeleteGreat blog Madeline! I think this is a really interesting connection to our history class. I have been to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, but I had no idea who she was. It is very cool that she tutored King Louis XIV’s sister and that she lived in Versailles because we just studied those in our most recent unit. I also find it interesting that even though Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum started out in France, it is now found all over the world! Good job!
ReplyDeleteYour blog was very interesting! I've always wanted to visit a wax museum. I've heard of Madame Tussaud before but i never really knew who she was and her significance. I like how you related your blog to a recent topic. It's interesting that she was connected to Louis XIV because we just studied him. I learned a lot from your blog! Good job!
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