My great-grandfather had a cigar in his mouth from when he was a young man in his twenties until his death at the age of eighty. Something tells me he would’ve liked this next museum in the Netherlands, where you can find a house made entirely of cigar bands. Sixty-five...
On this date in 1902 James C. Penney (aka J.C. Penney) opened his first store in Kemmerer, Wyoming. Today “The Mother Store” of the 1,106 department store chain is a national historic landmark along with Penney’s small house, where he lived from 1902-1909. Today these buildings are open for tours...
If you appreciate the fact you can actually see shit, especially at night, then do I have a museum for you. The Lumina Domestica in Bruges tells the 400,000-year history of domestic illumination. Yes, believe it or not, people have been trying to see things for that long. Located in...
Was not expecting this excellent tribute to the masters of slap stick comedy. I have watched the stooges since I was a little guy watching their two reelers at the YMCA on Saturday afternoons. This is a museum is totally dedicated to stooges memorabilia and souvenirs. Gary Lassin opened it...
As an architecture geek, this place definitely caught my eye. The Road Traffic Hall at the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne is literally made of road signs, but there is even more interesting stuff inside. The building, designed by architects Gigon/Guyer, has two floors of exhibition space, where visitors...
Cesare Lombroso founded the Italian school of criminology, which believed criminality was inherited, and that someone “born criminal” could be identified by physical defects. This theory was rejected throughout most of Europe but accepted in the United States during the 19th century. Even though Lombroso’s ideas are now viewed as...
I just learned that today, the 19th of June, is Museum Cake Day. Uh…don’t ask me why this shit exists…who associates cake with museums? I know I don’t. Cheap wine, maybe but not cake. Anyway, this seems like the perfect time to remember the Frances Kuyper’s Mini Cake Museum, unfortunately...
Only a few days after I told you about the Museum of Animated Carvings, we’re already back in Kansas. In the town of Lawrence, wanna-be blues musician “Honey Boy” (more like “White Boy”) Walker has filled the first floor of his home with such weird collections, including over 500 sock...
I HATE CONCEPTUAL ART! Nothing annoys me more than some rich kid finding a broken chair or bicycle in a dumpster, painting it or something, and then calling it “art”. Thank you, Marcel Duchamp. Anyway, I do give credit to dedicated conceptual artist Walter De Maria. His long-term installation piece,...
If Ted Nugent ever opens up a museum, expect it to look exactly like the Mann Wildlife Learning Museum. Purchased in 2003 by the Montgomery Zoo, the collection of 70 life-size taxidermied animals were trophy kills by world-record-holding bow and arrow hunter George Mann, who sometimes carried them on his...
Do you have a drawer full of barely used utensils? Well, I know I do. Unlike Surendrabhai Patel, I probably won’t display my utensils in a mud hut. But you can’t compare my old, crusty spoons to those from India. We’re talking about real craftsmanship here. Utensil is defined as...
Surprisingly, this blog has not been to India, one of the most populated countries in the world. So of course they have a few interesting museums. New Delhi has several, but one sticks out. Shankar’s International Dolls Museum was founded by a local cartoonist and has a collection of over...
