The Vent Haven Museum in Northern Kentucky is the world's only museum dedicated to ventriloquism.

Its displays range from Charlie McCarthy, dummies to many of Jeff Dunham's iconic characters.

Here's more in tonight's Tapestry.

Our weekly segment dedicated to arts and culture.

Puppetry in all forms has been around for centuries.

Ventriloquism isn't as old as the general artform.

You have to go more into the late 18th century to see that.

But it has been a way of doing basically comedy team performances, but done by one person.

So it's it's kind of parallels with comedic duos when you when you look at its history.

When our founder, W.S.

Berger, died in 1972, he had about 500 dummies and puppets in the collection.

And today we have more than 1100.

Just sitting by itself.

A doll needs its story told.

A puppet needs a story told.

And we use the ephemera, the photographs, playbills scripts, recordings, posters, all of that to help enhance that storytelling.

We have dummies that are the Sambo character, let's say, that was used to make fun of and ridicule black people directly.

They're absolutely offensive.

Absolutely offensive.

And we don't shy away from that.

Here we have an entire policy and are willing to discuss these items at any level that the visitor is comfortable talking about.

We can talk about those subtleties that exist today in how people of all nationalities and all races, genders, all of that, how it how is diversity represented today in a way that is either less offensive or still remnants of that type of offensive representation?

It's basically a chronological pass through time where we'll start with vaudeville and talk about the the popular artists of that time moving quickly into the American renaissance of ventriloquism.

We have several special exhibits that feature artists of different eras and then a television gallery where you see the artists that were on Ed Sullivan and other television shows and ending with the modern ventriloquist like Darci, Lynne and Jeff Dunham.

But when when someone thinks of a traditional ventriloquism piece, you're going to have a slot jaw that moves up and down, oftentimes eyes that move left and right.

Some of the pieces here are even more complicated, where they have eyebrows that move or ears that wiggle.

But the standard dummy is a woodcock carved head on a hollowed wood body with a head stick in the back.

And a simple mechanism there that the ventriloquist the ventriloquist excuse me, would just have to push a lever or pull a string to get that mouth to operate.

Yeah, we have a sense of what's called the uncanny valley, and we perceive life in things that look like humans, and that's just a natural reaction.

But if it's just a little bit off, then we become frightened.

So all of the dolls here that seem frozen, that's an unnatural human behavior.

We're all subtly moving all the time and we make eye contact in order to communicate that we're safe with one another.

And they're just not acting.

Right.

Right.

Are they going to speak to me or are they not going to speak to me?

So there's that anticipation of life and that's what produces that effect.

The whole point of ventriloquism is that you will believe that that dummy is alive.

And if you don't believe it, then what's the purpose of the act?

And so the figure makers are contributing to that illusion of life by creating these very lifelike characters.

Hi.

How are you guys doing?

What I hope for when people visit the museum is that they have an appreciation for the history and the art form and that they also have a direct connection emotionally to some peace.

Somewhere in time at this place.

Hmm.

Tours of the Vent Haven Museum are by appointment only.

So if you're interested, be sure to schedule your tour in advance on its website or over the phone.