Maud Stevens Wagner

Maud Stevens Wagner, the "Mona Lisa of American tattoo," was an ardent individualist who left home at a young age to pursue a career as a carnival performer, a contortionist, a tattoo model, and an aerialist. She was a thoroughly modern woman who asserted her independence and her own identity. Maud and her husband, Gus (known as the “most artistically marked-up man in America"), traveled the country as the Wagner’s Traveling Museum, exhibiting themselves and making tattoos around the US. This bo