12 Strange Museums You Never Knew Existed

[Garrison L. Hilliard]

BY DUSTIN TURNER ON 08/11/16


Museums are big business. The American Alliance of Museums estimates
that there are approximately 850 million museum visits every year, and
as you might expect, most of those are to museums dealing with art,
history, culture, science and nature. But beyond the realm of modern
art and historical reviews of human culture, there is another
subculuture of museums—places dedicated to telling the curious stories
of funerals, bananas, mustard, spies and even medical oddities.

Across America, there are hundreds of these museums that don't fit in
the standard categories. Some started as personal collections, and
it's clear they are the passion work for their proprietors—still
others have become big business. Here are 12 of the strangest—not
including the Ripley's Believe It or Not museums, which are an entire
category unto themselves.

International UFO Museum and Research Center
UFO Museum and Research Center
(©CrackerClips Stock Media/Shutterstock)


The International UFO Museum and Research Center is located in
Roswell, New Mexico (where else?), and is the home for information
about the famed “Roswell Incident” of 1947, in which a flying saucer
supposedly landed in the desert. It also houses other research,
photographs and displays dedicated to otherworldy phenomena, including
a re-creation of an alien autopsy. For a souvenir to take home,
purchase a 6-foot-tall inflatable green alien on the way out.

The International Cryptozoology Museum
International Cryptozoology Museum
(©Sporst/Flickr, Creative Commons)


The logo of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine,
is that of a coelecanth fish, and it's the perfect emblem of this
curious museum that focuses on the study of "hidden" animals. The
coelecanth was a type of fish believed to be extinct for 66 million
years, since the end of the Cretaceous Period. But then in 1938 off
the coast of South Africa, a real coelecanth was caught. Today, the
museum studies other animals that are rumored to exist: You will find
supposed hair samples from the Abominable Snowman and Bigfoot, fecal
matter from a small Yeti, a doll of a baby Bigfoot and the movie prop
of the FeeJee Mermaid from the 1999 AMC film “P.T. Barnum.” Whatever
you do, though, don’t feed the Bigfoot.

Museum of Bad Art
Museum of Bad Art Somerville
(©Chris Devers/Flickr, Creative Commons)


Forget all that good stuff at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Instead, head out to the city's suburbs where the Museum of Bad Art
(MoBA) has enough pieces for three galleries—in Dedham, Somerville and
Brookline—mostly in the basements of community theaters. At the
galleries, guests will see all kinds of art in categories such as
landscape, “in the nood,” blue people and “poor traits." Is it
intentionally bad or did the pieces just turn out that way? We may
never know.

Glore Psychiatric Museum
Glore Psychiatric Museum
(©David Becker/Wikimedia Commons)


Fans of psychological horror films, pay attention. Imagine the
exhibits that came from the 130-year history of St. Joseph's Lunatic
Asylum, later renamed the St. Joseph (Missouri) State Hospital.
Visitors can see a variety of unusual surgical tools, treatment
equipment (including a device that dunks patients into an ice-cold
bath, pictured), personal notes and artwork from mental patients and
more. One rather macabre exhibit shows the 453 nails and other metal
items that were swallowed by an inmate in one sitting. (She died in
surgery while doctors attempted to remove the items.) The psychiatric
museum is even on the adjoining grounds of the original hospital.

National Museum of Funeral History
National Museum of Funeral History
(Courtesy National Museum of Funeral History)


This is one museum that tries to puts the "fun" in "funeral." Awful
puns aside, this museum is dedicated to the “honor and compassion of
the funeral services industry.” The Houston, Texas, museum has
America’s largest collection of historical funeral items. There are
caskets, coffins and hearses and a look at the funerals of presidents,
popes, celebrities and more. The museum’s website even offers obituary
and eulogy writing resources. Our favorite souvenir? That would be the
coffee mug printed with this optimistic slogan: “Any day above ground
is a good one.”

National Mustard Museum
National Mustard Museum
(©McBeth/Flickr, Creative Commons)


Whether you like it sweet, spicy, honey-flavored or another way, it's
all here. This museum pays homage to everybody’s favorite tangy yellow
condiment. In Middleton, Wisconsin, see more than 5,000 jars and tins
of prepared mustard from 70 countries. Such a museum wouldn't be
complete, though, if you couldn't taste the mustard. Belly up to the
bar and try the spicy, sweet, tequila or wasabi mustard. The store
contains a variety of apparel and cookbooks—“50 Shades of Mustard,”
anyone?

Museum of Sex
Museum of Sex
(©WalrusWaltz/FLickr, Creative Commons)


Sex is everywhere in this small museum in Manhattan's NoMad district,
and not surprisingly, visitors have to be at least 18 to enter New
York City’s MoSEX. As expected, there are explicit exhibits (as well
as more academic exhibits), so you'll have to make a personal judgment
call on whether this is an appropriate visit.

International Spy Museum
International spy museum
(©Gareth Milner/Flickr, Creative Commons)


The world’s only museum dedicated to espionage is in Washington, D.C.
Hands-on and interactive exhibits show some of the tricks of the trade
for real and fictitious spies, including a model of the Trojan Horse.
No museum dedicated to the spy trade would be complete without a James
Bond exhibit, and this one looks at 50 years of Bond villains. No
small oddity, the International Spy Museum encompasses more than
20,000 square feet and was built at a cost of $40 million, since
becoming one of the capital's most popular museums. The response to
this privately owned museum's niche focus has been staggering, and the
museum is planning a major move to a new space in 2018.

Burlingame Museum of Pez
Burlingame Pez Museum
(©Ingrid Taylar/Flickr, Creative Commons)


Pez was invented in 1927 in Vienna, Austria, as a simple peppermint
breathmint, but today, the brand is best known for the Pez dispenser—a
long, plastic tube with a cartoonish head that folds back to deliver
little rectangular candies. The dispensers arrived on the scene in the
later 1940s, styled originally to look like cigarette lighters, but in
the 1950s the company made its game-changing move, releasing
candy-flavored mints along with its now-iconic character-themed
dispensers. Today, the Burlingame (California) Museum of Pez has an
example of every Pez dispenser ever sold, more than 1,000 pieces, from
jack-o-lanters to Disney characters to comic-book superheroes. Also on
display is the 2008 Guiness World Record largest Pez dispenser—a white
dispenser with a snowman head that stands 7 foot, 10 inches.

Vent Haven Museum
Vent Haven ventriloquist museum
(©5chw4r7z/Flickr, Creative Commons)


If you find ventriloquist dummies to be creepy—ever seen the film
"Dead Silence"?—then don't visit the Vent Haven Museum located in Fort
Mitchell, Kentucky, an easy afternoon trip from Cincinatti, Ohio.
Founded by William Shakespeare Berger (a show-stopping name if there
ever was one), the museum was created after the collector’s dummy
collection got too big to fit in his garage. Today, the museum
contains more than 800 figurines, thousands of photos, playbills,
letters and books. The museum even plays host to an annual
international ConVENTion for more than 600 ventriloquists.

Mütter Museum
Mütter Museum
(©PROistolethetv/Flickr, Creative Commons)


Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum houses a small but diverse collection of
odd and peculiar medical artifacts. See slices of Albert Einstein’s
brain, a collection of 139 human skulls, 2,374 objects that have been
inhaled or swallowed and a cast—and the livers—of conjoined twins
Chang and Eng Butler. For a strange souvenir, visit the museum store
and take home a cookie cutter in the shape of those conjoined twins.
Depending on your sense of humor, it will either be the best—or
worst—$6.50 you will ever spend.

The International Banana Museum
international banana museum
(©Vanessa Rose/Flickr, Creative Commons)


Who knew the “most aPEELING destination on the planet” was in North
Shore, California, near the Salton Sea? As the name implies, this
museum is completely dedicated to the tropical yellow fruit. There are
more than 20,000 banana-related items, from stuffed toys to art and
advertising displays. Pull up a barstool and enjoy a banana shake,
banana soda ice cream float or chocolate-covered banana. Sorry, no
banana daiquiris here.

http://www.wheretraveler.com/12-strange-museums-you-never-knew-existed?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&spMailingID=15171748&spUserID=MTMxODIzNjE3NDc0S0&spJobID=840838670&spReportId=ODQwODM4NjcwS0

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[DALE SHARP]

I visited the UFO museum in Roswell in 2002.  It was hilarious.  I had a discussion with an elderly gentleman (now deceased) named Glenn Dennis.  It was only later that I remembered that he was the mortician who in the process of delivering child-size coffins to the airfield, claimed to have seen the alien bodies.  Had I remembered, I would have asked a few questions. 
The National Mustard Museum is worth the trip if you're in the area.  I was there on National Mustard Day, and they had bands and food (hot dogs and soft pretzels of course) and they had vendors of craft mustard as well as the major companies making mustard and other local food purveyors.  The Mustard Dutchess was walking around meeting guests.  The museum, in addition to the thousands of different mustard types from all over the world, they had a very nice of antique mustard containers and spoons.  If you are not there on there on National Mustard Day, there is a mustard vending machine in case you are caught short.
Dale

On Saturday, August 13, 2016 3:32 PM, Garrison L. Hilliard <***@efn.org> wrote:


BY DUSTIN TURNER ON 08/11/16


Museums are big business. The American Alliance of Museums estimates
that there are approximately 850 million museum visits every year, and
as you might expect, most of those are to museums dealing with art,
history, culture, science and nature. But beyond the realm of modern
art and historical reviews of human culture, there is another
subculuture of museums—places dedicated to telling the curious stories
of funerals, bananas, mustard, spies and even medical oddities.

Across America, there are hundreds of these museums that don't fit in
the standard categories. Some started as personal collections, and
it's clear they are the passion work for their proprietors—still
others have become big business. Here are 12 of the strangest—not
including the Ripley's Believe It or Not museums, which are an entire
category unto themselves.

International UFO Museum and Research Center
UFO Museum and Research Center
(©CrackerClips Stock Media/Shutterstock)


The International UFO Museum and Research Center is located in
Roswell, New Mexico (where else?), and is the home for information
about the famed “Roswell Incident” of 1947, in which a flying saucer
supposedly landed in the desert. It also houses other research,
photographs and displays dedicated to otherworldy phenomena, including
a re-creation of an alien autopsy. For a souvenir to take home,
purchase a 6-foot-tall inflatable green alien on the way out.

The International Cryptozoology Museum
International Cryptozoology Museum
(©Sporst/Flickr, Creative Commons)


The logo of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine,
is that of a coelecanth fish, and it's the perfect emblem of this
curious museum that focuses on the study of "hidden" animals. The
coelecanth was a type of fish believed to be extinct for 66 million
years, since the end of the Cretaceous Period. But then in 1938 off
the coast of South Africa, a real coelecanth was caught. Today, the
museum studies other animals that are rumored to exist: You will find
supposed hair samples from the Abominable Snowman and Bigfoot, fecal
matter from a small Yeti, a doll of a baby Bigfoot and the movie prop
of the FeeJee Mermaid from the 1999 AMC film “P.T. Barnum.” Whatever
you do, though, don’t feed the Bigfoot.

Museum of Bad Art
Museum of Bad Art Somerville
(©Chris Devers/Flickr, Creative Commons)


Forget all that good stuff at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Instead, head out to the city's suburbs where the Museum of Bad Art
(MoBA) has enough pieces for three galleries—in Dedham, Somerville and
Brookline—mostly in the basements of community theaters. At the
galleries, guests will see all kinds of art in categories such as
landscape, “in the nood,” blue people and “poor traits." Is it
intentionally bad or did the pieces just turn out that way? We may
never know.

Glore Psychiatric Museum
Glore Psychiatric Museum
(©David Becker/Wikimedia Commons)


Fans of psychological horror films, pay attention. Imagine the
exhibits that came from the 130-year history of St. Joseph's Lunatic
Asylum, later renamed the St. Joseph (Missouri) State Hospital.
Visitors can see a variety of unusual surgical tools, treatment
equipment (including a device that dunks patients into an ice-cold
bath, pictured), personal notes and artwork from mental patients and
more. One rather macabre exhibit shows the 453 nails and other metal
items that were swallowed by an inmate in one sitting. (She died in
surgery while doctors attempted to remove the items.) The psychiatric
museum is even on the adjoining grounds of the original hospital.

National Museum of Funeral History
National Museum of Funeral History
(Courtesy National Museum of Funeral History)


This is one museum that tries to puts the "fun" in "funeral." Awful
puns aside, this museum is dedicated to the “honor and compassion of
the funeral services industry.” The Houston, Texas, museum has
America’s largest collection of historical funeral items. There are
caskets, coffins and hearses and a look at the funerals of presidents,
popes, celebrities and more. The museum’s website even offers obituary
and eulogy writing resources. Our favorite souvenir? That would be the
coffee mug printed with this optimistic slogan: “Any day above ground
is a good one.”

National Mustard Museum
National Mustard Museum
(©McBeth/Flickr, Creative Commons)


Whether you like it sweet, spicy, honey-flavored or another way, it's
all here. This museum pays homage to everybody’s favorite tangy yellow
condiment. In Middleton, Wisconsin, see more than 5,000 jars and tins
of prepared mustard from 70 countries. Such a museum wouldn't be
complete, though, if you couldn't taste the mustard. Belly up to the
bar and try the spicy, sweet, tequila or wasabi mustard. The store
contains a variety of apparel and cookbooks—“50 Shades of Mustard,”
anyone?

Museum of Sex
Museum of Sex
(©WalrusWaltz/FLickr, Creative Commons)


Sex is everywhere in this small museum in Manhattan's NoMad district,
and not surprisingly, visitors have to be at least 18 to enter New
York City’s MoSEX. As expected, there are explicit exhibits (as well
as more academic exhibits), so you'll have to make a personal judgment
call on whether this is an appropriate visit.

International Spy Museum
International spy museum
(©Gareth Milner/Flickr, Creative Commons)


The world’s only museum dedicated to espionage is in Washington, D.C.
Hands-on and interactive exhibits show some of the tricks of the trade
for real and fictitious spies, including a model of the Trojan Horse.
No museum dedicated to the spy trade would be complete without a James
Bond exhibit, and this one looks at 50 years of Bond villains. No
small oddity, the International Spy Museum encompasses more than
20,000 square feet and was built at a cost of $40 million, since
becoming one of the capital's most popular museums. The response to
this privately owned museum's niche focus has been staggering, and the
museum is planning a major move to a new space in 2018.

Burlingame Museum of Pez
Burlingame Pez Museum
(©Ingrid Taylar/Flickr, Creative Commons)


Pez was invented in 1927 in Vienna, Austria, as a simple peppermint
breathmint, but today, the brand is best known for the Pez dispenser—a
long, plastic tube with a cartoonish head that folds back to deliver
little rectangular candies. The dispensers arrived on the scene in the
later 1940s, styled originally to look like cigarette lighters, but in
the 1950s the company made its game-changing move, releasing
candy-flavored mints along with its now-iconic character-themed
dispensers. Today, the Burlingame (California) Museum of Pez has an
example of every Pez dispenser ever sold, more than 1,000 pieces, from
jack-o-lanters to Disney characters to comic-book superheroes. Also on
display is the 2008 Guiness World Record largest Pez dispenser—a white
dispenser with a snowman head that stands 7 foot, 10 inches.

Vent Haven Museum
Vent Haven ventriloquist museum
(©5chw4r7z/Flickr, Creative Commons)


If you find ventriloquist dummies to be creepy—ever seen the film
"Dead Silence"?—then don't visit the Vent Haven Museum located in Fort
Mitchell, Kentucky, an easy afternoon trip from Cincinatti, Ohio.
Founded by William Shakespeare Berger (a show-stopping name if there
ever was one), the museum was created after the collector’s dummy
collection got too big to fit in his garage. Today, the museum
contains more than 800 figurines, thousands of photos, playbills,
letters and books. The museum even plays host to an annual
international ConVENTion for more than 600 ventriloquists.

Mütter Museum
Mütter Museum
(©PROistolethetv/Flickr, Creative Commons)


Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum houses a small but diverse collection of
odd and peculiar medical artifacts. See slices of Albert Einstein’s
brain, a collection of 139 human skulls, 2,374 objects that have been
inhaled or swallowed and a cast—and the livers—of conjoined twins
Chang and Eng Butler. For a strange souvenir, visit the museum store
and take home a cookie cutter in the shape of those conjoined twins.
Depending on your sense of humor, it will either be the best—or
worst—$6.50 you will ever spend.

The International Banana Museum
international banana museum
(©Vanessa Rose/Flickr, Creative Commons)


Who knew the “most aPEELING destination on the planet” was in North
Shore, California, near the Salton Sea? As the name implies, this
museum is completely dedicated to the tropical yellow fruit. There are
more than 20,000 banana-related items, from stuffed toys to art and
advertising displays. Pull up a barstool and enjoy a banana shake,
banana soda ice cream float or chocolate-covered banana. Sorry, no
banana daiquiris here.

http://www.wheretraveler.com/12-strange-museums-you-never-knew-existed?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&spMailingID=15171748&spUserID=MTMxODIzNjE3NDc0S0&spJobID=840838670&spReportId=ODQwODM4NjcwS0

_______________________________________________
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http://lists.opn.org/mailman/listinfo/skeptix_lists.opn.org



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[Gerry Harris]

Thanks so much for this. I hadn't perused the online collection at the
Museum of Bad Art in years (http://www.museumofbadart.org/). I got just
as much a chuckle (actually occasionally laughing so hard I had tears)
as when I first saw it.

I'll have to check out the sex museum since that's near me; I've been to
the Mutter - that's worth a trip for those into weirdness. I'm sometimes
in the Portland ME area and have thought about stopping into Loren
Coleman's Crytptozoology museum. Anybody here ever been there?

Thanks, ...Gerry

Post by Garrison L. Hilliard
Museum of Bad Art
Museum of Bad Art Somerville
(©Chris Devers/Flickr, Creative Commons)
Forget all that good stuff at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Instead, head out to the city's suburbs where the Museum of Bad Art
(MoBA) has enough pieces for three galleries—in Dedham, Somerville and
Brookline—mostly in the basements of community theaters. At the
galleries, guests will see all kinds of art in categories such as
landscape, “in the nood,” blue people and “poor traits." Is it
intentionally bad or did the pieces just turn out that way? We may
never know.

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ***@netfront.net ---

[Wendy Grossman]

Odd that the list doesn't include the Museum of Jurassic Technology in
LA, which is certainly the strangest one I've ever been to - and I've
visited the Mutter Museum on that list.

wg

Post by Gerry Harris
Thanks so much for this. I hadn't perused the online collection at the
Museum of Bad Art in years (http://www.museumofbadart.org/). I got just
as much a chuckle (actually occasionally laughing so hard I had tears)
as when I first saw it.
I'll have to check out the sex museum since that's near me; I've been to
the Mutter - that's worth a trip for those into weirdness. I'm sometimes
in the Portland ME area and have thought about stopping into Loren
Coleman's Crytptozoology museum. Anybody here ever been there?
Thanks, ...Gerry

Post by Garrison L. Hilliard
Museum of Bad Art
Museum of Bad Art Somerville
(©Chris Devers/Flickr, Creative Commons)
Forget all that good stuff at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Instead, head out to the city's suburbs where the Museum of Bad Art
(MoBA) has enough pieces for three galleries—in Dedham, Somerville and
Brookline—mostly in the basements of community theaters. At the
galleries, guests will see all kinds of art in categories such as
landscape, “in the nood,” blue people and “poor traits." Is it
intentionally bad or did the pieces just turn out that way? We may
never know.

_______________________________________________
Skeptix mailing list
http://lists.opn.org/mailman/listinfo/skeptix_lists.opn.org

[Karen Daskawicz]

I've been to the National Mustard Museum -- but it's more of a store that
sells a lot of different mustards than it is a museum.

Post by Wendy Grossman
Odd that the list doesn't include the Museum of Jurassic Technology in
LA, which is certainly the strangest one I've ever been to - and I've
visited the Mutter Museum on that list.
wg

Post by Gerry Harris
Thanks so much for this. I hadn't perused the online collection at the
Museum of Bad Art in years (http://www.museumofbadart.org/). I got just
as much a chuckle (actually occasionally laughing so hard I had tears)
as when I first saw it.
I'll have to check out the sex museum since that's near me; I've been to
the Mutter - that's worth a trip for those into weirdness. I'm sometimes
in the Portland ME area and have thought about stopping into Loren
Coleman's Crytptozoology museum. Anybody here ever been there?
Thanks, ...Gerry

Post by Garrison L. Hilliard
Museum of Bad Art
Museum of Bad Art Somerville
(©Chris Devers/Flickr, Creative Commons)
Forget all that good stuff at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Instead, head out to the city's suburbs where the Museum of Bad Art
(MoBA) has enough pieces for three galleries—in Dedham, Somerville and
Brookline—mostly in the basements of community theaters. At the
galleries, guests will see all kinds of art in categories such as
landscape, “in the nood,” blue people and “poor traits." Is it
intentionally bad or did the pieces just turn out that way? We may
never know.

_______________________________________________
Skeptix mailing list
http://lists.opn.org/mailman/listinfo/skeptix_lists.opn.org

--
www.pelicancrossing.net <- all about me
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