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The Oddities & Curiosities Expo is returning to Minneapolis on Saturday with about 150 vendors, artisans and dealers, a “mad clown” museum, sideshow acts and a sold-out taxidermy class. 

Michelle Cozzaglio and her husband, Tony, started creating “offbeat, unusual events” in Tulsa, Oklahoma, starting in 2014. 

They created the Oddities & Curiosities Expo in 2017 with the focus of having an event for “dark artists, the strange, Halloween style art, oddities, antiques,” explained Cozzaglio.

“I thought it would be smaller than our other events, like our Punk Rock Flea Market,” she said. But then roughly 1,000 people came to the first Oddities & Curiosities Expo. 

“It hit this niche market that I don't think anyone knew we needed. But apparently we did.”

The founders had friends in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area when they began thinking about where else to host the expo. They also had a “ton of people online telling them to come here,” so they scheduled the expo in Minneapolis for the first time in 2019.

The expo will visit 30 cities across the U.S. this year. On May 20,

 will be at the Minneapolis Convention Center.

People are welcome to come dressed up for the expo in gothic dress or cosplay: “We definitely love it when people come dressed up,” said Cozzaglio.

“We try to provide a circusy-style vibe to it.” 

Rainy Day Revival, an oddities store in Atlanta, hosts an exclusive museum exhibit that travels with the expo. 

“They really got into hosting this museum with us because they're just huge personal collectors … it's just a huge passion of theirs to collect true oddities and true antiques,” Cozagglio said. 

This year the Oddities Museum is hosting the “Cryptic Collection of a Mad Clown” exhibit. It is described as “a collection of taxidermied pets, the remains of carnival animals (and patrons),” and “terrifying beasts, like a Real Mermaid, a Six-Foot Man-Eating Chicken and genetically engineered monsters.”

Cozzaglio said people can think of it as a “Ripley’s Believe It or Not! style type of museum.” The tickets to see the museum exhibit can be purchased before the expo or at the door.

The expo also hosts a taxidermy class limited to 45 seats per venue; seats are already sold out for the Minneapolis stop.

The taxidermy classes started in 2019. Minnesota will have rabbits this year, which can be adorned in a way people can bring home taxidermied jackalopes or regular rabbits. 

“And throughout the day, we have performers on stage doing classic sideshow stunts. Like swallowing swords, walking on glass, doing the human pin cushion routine, and all kinds of stuff like that. So it's definitely like, going for that circus old-school sideshow vibe to it,” Cozzaglio said. 

The side performances are part of the general admission tickets, so there is no extra fee to watch them.

The exhibitor applications open on Halloween for the following year of venues.

It varies per venue, but 150 to 200 vendors are chosen to exhibit per city.

“This past year, coming into 2023, we received the most applications we ever have. I actually had to turn off the applications within 24 hours of announcing them, because we received so many.”

Cozzaglio and her husband choose vendors based on who they feel fits the show best. 

“I do that as the owner because I find it's really important to have a wide selection of people of different types of oddities,” she said. This way not every vendor is selling the same thing. About 30 percent of vendors are local to the area.

There are gothic clothing vendors, jewelry vendors, dark fantasy items, taxidermy, Halloween-style art, rocks and crystals and more. People “can find antiques and vintage items on the spectrum of odd.”

Due to the rapid growth of the expo, Oddities & Curiosities Expos are “going to two days next year everywhere.”

“We expect this year to be our biggest Minneapolis show to date.”

Ethical buying and selling is also part of the expo: no human remains or bats are sold. No species were killed for the sake of art or collecting.

“We don't want any part in that. I would happily have true, ethically and responsibly sourced human remains that came from a medical school. But at this point, you can't actually confirm that…and because we can't, then I don't want to be a part of spreading something that's not ethically and responsibly sourced,” Cozzaglio said.

All taxidermy sold is sourced sustainably through “vet clinics, farms, sanctuaries, road kill, foraging, antique/vintage auctions and more.”

There is also a wide range of what to buy at the expo. “our vendors try to have items that are you know, $5 … Or you can come and spend $5,000 on taxidermy and antiques and stuff.”

“We really try to like have something weird for everyone,” Cozzaglio said. “It really is open to everyone to come.”

 Minneapolis Convention Center, Hall E, 1301 Second Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55404.

 Expo admission is $10 in advance, $15 at the door and free for kids 12 and younger. Oddities Museum admission is an additional $5 in advance, $7 at the door and free for kids 5 and younger. 

Robyn Katona

Author

The Oddities & Curiosities Expo is bringing about 150 vendors selling gothic and dark-fantasy items, a “mad clown” museum, sideshow acts and a taxidermy class to Minneapolis on Saturday, May 20.

Courtesy Jarrett Barnes 

People attend an expo featuring gothic and dark-fantasy items

Love taxidermy, odd art and mad clowns? Check out this circus-like expo

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