The person who claimed that museums are dull and primarily for history aficionados may have overlooked the museum that showcases poor art. Alternatively, consider visiting the museum that displays artifacts from the throne room. This includes the collection of mementos that people left over after a breakup. Bring your sense of humor and an open mind for a journey to these bizarre and amazing museums.
Museum of Weird, Where: Austin, TX.
What: The Museum of Weird showcases all the oddities you’d ever want to see. The collection features movie monsters, shrunken heads, the Fiji Mermaid, giant lizards and…the supernatural.
Leila’s Hair Museum, Where: Independence, MO.
What: Leila’s Hair Museum displays 159 wreaths and over 2,000 pieces of jewelry made of human hair, celebrating the 18th and 19th Century tradition of making keepsakes out of the hair of loved ones. Leila’s Hair Museum recently became the national headquarters for the Victorian Hairwork Society.
Washington Banana Museum, Where: Auburn, WA.
What: The Washington Banana Museum features over 4,000 banana-related artifacts, including vintage advertisements and folk art. Curator Ann Mitchell Lovell began collecting banana-inspired oddities after a 1980 trip to Hawaii and since then, “the collection just came in a bunch!”
Giant Shoe Museum, Where: Seattle, WA.
What: The Giant Shoe Museum exhibits, you guessed it, giant shoes. A shoe worn by Robert Wadlow, the world’s tallest man, is on display, as is a five-foot-long wing tip shoe from the 1920s.
New York Museum of Water, Where: New York, NY.
What: The New York Museum of Water educates people about responsible water use. Exhibits include water-inspired artwork and water education workshops.
Cumberland Pencil Co. Museum, Where: Keswick, Cumbria, United Kingdom.
What: Located on the grounds of an old pencil factory, the Cumberland Pencil Co. Museum presents a variety of artifacts relevant to the production of colored pencils, from raw materials to machinery to packaging. Though the factory was built in 1832, the manufacture of colored pencils in the region stretches back 350 years. The museum was founded 25 years ago and welcomes 80,000 visitors per year.
Barber Jon’s Curiosity Museum, Where: El Dorado Hills, CA.
What: Housed in back of a barber shop, Barber Jon’s collection of aboriginal shrunken heads, an authentic jackalope and the remains of a Fiji Mermaid are truly strange. The best part: Admission is free with a haircut.
Shin-Yokohama Raumen Museum, Where: Yokohama, Japan.
What: The quintessential college food staple has its own museum in Japan, for true fans and connoisseurs of the ramen noodle. It displays manufacturing equipment, ramen bowls, chopsticks and wrappers, matchbooks from ramen shops, and more.
National Mustard Museum, Where: Middleton, WI.
What: Everyone’s favorite condiment has a remarkably thorough museum. More than just a gift shop, the gallery showcases an extensive collection of prepared mustards — more than 5,000 jars, bottles, and tubes from all 50 states and more than 60 countries. The Museum also houses hundreds of mustard-related items of great historical importance, including mustard pots and vintage mustard advertisements.
Museum of Irons, Where: Ves’kovo village, Pereslavl, Russia.
What: An old merchant’s house not far from the town’s center displays one of the strangest museums you’ll ever visit. Its collection includes some 200 irons made in Russia, Germany and Poland between the 17th and 20th centuries. A guided tour is sure to inform, with details on the principles of operation and weight.
Museum of Kettles, Where: Ves’kovo village, Pereslavl, Russia.
What: A log house in the same town as the museum of irons holds an equally strange collection: kettles. The museum has more than 100 exhibits on the subject, and includes various copper, porcelain, and German silver kettles of different types and shapes. The museum’s Web site explains that visitors can also see household utensils used in Russia in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Museum of Toilets, Where: New Delhi, India.
What: Inspired by the evolution of toilets over time, Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak founded the museum to educate the public about past sanitation practices to enable innovations in the field. Pathak created the sanitation-focused, non-governmental organization Sulabh International Social Service Organization and serves as a consultant for the U.N.’s Economic and Social Council. The museum’s collection includes toilets from around the world, spanning the colorful history of sanitation.
Farm Wrench Museum, Where: The R – Lucky Star Ranch, Marsing, Idaho.
What: If you like farm equipment, you’ll love a visit to the Lucky Star Ranch, which bills itself as home of the largest, organized, farm implement wrench collection in the world. The collection resides in a former tractor shed, where museum operators also showcase the world’s largest sugar sack collection — which is pretty odd in itself.
Museum of Quackery, Where: St. Paul, Minnesota.
What: The collection of the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices moved to the Science Museum of Minnesota in 2002, but the artifacts Founder Bob McCoy gathered up remain wonderfully available there. The museum showcases Kellogg’s early vibrating chair, the psychograph (which helped the pseudo-science of phrenology), and more.
National Museum of Funeral History, Where: Houston, Texas.
What: Open since 1992, the National Museum of Funeral History aims to “preserve the rich heritage of the funeral industry” — and does so in grand style, with over 35,500 square feet of exhibition space. It features exhibits on the lives and deaths of popes, Civil War-era embalming, fantasy coffins, like those shown here, and more.
Museum Of Bad Art, Where: Needham, Massachusetts.
What: Featuring art that’s unfit for many a museum wall, the Museum of Bad Art, or MOBA, began with a single painting being pulled from the trash. “Lucy in the Field with Flowers” was the seed from which MOBA sprung. The museum now maintains a collection of 400 pieces, which are “too bad to be ignored.”
Mütter Museum, Where: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
What: Before the “Bodies” exhibit, Dr. Mütter created the Mütter Museum in 1859 as an educational tool for College of Physicians of Philadelphia students. The collection consists of 20,000 specimens of medical anomalies, like a cast of Siamese Twins Chang and Eng and Joseph Hyrtl’s collection of skulls.
