This Belongs in a Museum
Bringing you museum-approved grammatical errors and typos since 2010.
Oh, and sorry - I DO NOT FOLLOW BACK!
Everyone knows not to drink the mini bottles from the hotel fridge, but if you have a fetish for the stuff then maybe you should check out the World’s Only Mini Bottle Museum in Oslo, Norway. Just as long as you promise not to steal any, even though there are enough of them to go around. There are a total of 53,000 bottles, about 40,000 are strictly monitored in a vault, including some 13,000 cognac bottles and 5,000 bottles of malt whiskey. Who has time to drink all that liquor? Actually I know a few people who do. But let’s talk about the bottles you can actually see…they are displayed in various installations over three levels. There is a circus exhibit and some kind of bordello situation going on (see above). The museum “curator” is Christian Rignes, a fourth generation brewer and eccentric millionaire. When Rignes was seven years old he received a collector’s bottle from his father and a hobby was born. His wife Denise hated the collection in their home, plus some of it accidentally broke (um…does Denise have an alibi?), so he opened a gallery to house the collection in May 2003. Luckily, for all the alcoholics out there “The Mini Bar” serves your choice of beverage, but from much a larger bottle. Just don’t drink too much, especially any potential male visitors out there. A slide takes you down to the “Horror Room” and I don’t know about you but the urinal is kind of scary-looking. Oh, what’s my favourite bottle? Probably the MLK Jr. Yep.
Think you’re in need of a nose job? Wonder how many noses it takes to build a nose museum? Well, hundreds of schnozzes live on in Sweden. Housed in the Museum of Student Life at Lund University, the Nose Academy (could there be any other name?), managed by a Nasal Committee (how do I get on board?) is a collection of plaster casts of noses belonging to distinguished Scandinavians, like Tycho Brahe’s legendary silver nose as well as several unknown noses of the common man. Mirrors are part of the display so that visitors can see the nose in profile and front-on. Unfortunately, the collection is missing the non-existent blowhole of Michael Jackson, but I know if Jacko hadn’t died unexpectedly, I think he would have taken Swedish citizenship and donated what was left of his collapsed nose to this museum of nasal immortality.
Believe it or not, Scandinavians have a thing for nostrils. In Copenhagan, at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, the Nasothek display is a collection of restoration noses removed from portrait busts and statues. The noses, some made of marble and plaster, were all originally exhibited on the Greek and Roman portrait statues located in the museum itself. During the 19th century, it was common practice for museums to exhibit marble sculptures in a “restored” state, with damaged parts repaired or reconstructed to make the statue look as much as possible as it did when it was first created. In the 20th-century “de-restoration” period, many Roman portrait heads became noseless again, with their restored noses removed to become part of the museum’s collection in a different way.
Time for another creepy museum, maybe not in the classic sense, but it’s still a bit weird for an art museum. What am I talking about? That would be the Vigeland Museum at Slemdal, one of Oslo’s best kept secrets. The museum is basically a mausoleum to artist Gustav Vigeland and his brother Emanuel’s life and work, which is actually true; besides the frescoes and sculptures, Emanuel’s ashes are still preserved in the belfry of the building. The main attraction is a dark, barrel-vaulted room, which is completely covered with frescoes, including Vita, showing human life from conception till death, although a bit erotically. In the darkness, there are a bunch of large bronze figures, all nude, depicting what procreation looks like. North of the museum is Frogner Park, where more life-sized nudes are on view, including a woman mounting a bear and a muscular man throwing and kicking babies in the air. That rhymed. Even though I don’t condone violence towards children, I can’t help but want the statue in my home…I can put it directly under a framed copy of my useless teaching certificate.
Affecting humans for 4,000 years, leprosy is not a pretty sight. St. Jorgen’s Hospital in Norway is one of world’s oldest medical institutions, establishing itself in the Middle Ages to treat lepers. Between 1850 and 1900 Bergen was the international capital of leprosy, with three hospitals and the largest concentration of patients in Europe. Dedicated to the 8,000 people who died of the disease in modern Norway, the Leprosy Museum started in 1970. Located in the former 18th century hospital, there are exhibits on Dr. Gerhard Hansen, the man who discovered the cure for leprosy, as well as the history and treatments of the disease. If you’re in a bit of a funk, just watch this 1960s Iranian documentary on a leper colony (especially after the 5:00 minute mark). Be thankful for what you got…or don’t got.
This post is dedicated to my 500th follower artexpo. Let’s travel to another unexplored country with a visit to the Lofoten Torrfiskmuseum (Stockfish Museum) in Norway. What’s stockfish, you ask? Unsalted fish like cod, whitefish, pollock, haddock, long and tusk have been dried on wooden racks or in special drying houses for thousands of years. There’s also a Fishing Museum in Å (yep, this small fishing village is called Å). But as you can see from the picture, the most exciting part of the Stockfish Museum is not the fish, but the cookies.
