Raven is a podcast about the unforgettable man who founded Harlem's first and only wax museum and the extraordinary people who went out of their way to keep its memory alive.
Raven Chanticleer was a multi-talented artist and larger-than-life eccentric. For thirty years, he dreamed of opening a wax museum devoted to Black history in Harlem. In 1989, he finally did. The African American Wax Museum, as it was called, garnered widespread attention in New York and abroad, with Black artists, intellectuals, and politicians singing its praises.
When Raven died in 2002, his family gutted the museum and sold the property, destroying his life's work and outraging the community. For years, Raven's prized, handmade wax figures were thought to have been lost to history. After an eighteen-month investigation, host Gavin Whitehead discovered that a handful miraculously survived--you just had to know where to look for them.
If you like Raven, you might also like Gavin's other podcast, The Art of Crime. It's a history podcast about the unlikely collisions between true crime and the arts. New theme each season.
Raven is a production of Drum and Monkey Media.