mixdenny (pencil sharpener museum) and WildaBeast (mustard) brought us here (from this thread).
It prompts the obvious question: what weird and/or absurdly specialised museums have you visited, or indeed chosen not to visit, or perhaps are simply aware of?
For my part I give you The Chip Museum (as in french fries) in Bruges, Belgium*. I love Bruges. Frankly, there’s plenty to do there without visiting museums. Even sensible ones. We opted not to.
So what have you got? And did you actually visit?
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OK, I accept that, given Belgium’s national obsession with frites, from a local perspective this may be hardly specialised at all. But anyway.
There’s a marzipan museum in Szentendre, Hungary, which even has lifesized figures made out of marzipan (so, like a wax museum.) Madison, Wisconsin, has a mustard museum. And here in Chicago we have a museum of surgical sciences.
Technically The Mustard Museum is in Middleton, not Madison. Separate towns (though they’ve grown out to each other these days).
Part of La Specola in Florence, Italy, is devoted to was anatomical figures. I looked at a few then sat on the steps of the area and basked in the A.C. while my dad checked them out.
A number of my family members are big fans of the British Channel Island of Guernsey. (I’m not in that select band – I reckon it a perfectly nice place, but “not all that much of a much”.) Our family “Guernsey nuts” have long had an ongoing joke to the effect that even on that blessed isle: you’re running short of things to do, if you’re starting to contemplate a visit to the Guernsey Telephone Museum. (Which I learn, incidentally, has recently closed; though there is some hope of a revival.)
I get the feeling that I personally would – although not exactly riveted – probably find a certain amount of interest in this particular establishment. More so, I’d reckon, than with one dedicated to pencil sharpeners or barbed wire.
I love going to all of those “strange”/niche/small town museums when I’m on the road. There’s a lot of junk, kitsch and cheesy stuff but I find there’s always at least one item that makes the visit worthwhile. One example in particular was at the Kern Valley Museum that had a beautiful pristine B-17 training manual filled with amazing multi-layered transparent overlays.
In the Bay Area there’s the Pez Museum in Burlingame, the Bigfoot Museum in Felton and the Crockett Historical Museum with its stuffed record-setting sturgeon.
The story is actually quite dramatic – Petrosino pioneered undercover policing techniques still used today, befriended New York City Police Commissioner Teddy Roosevelt, and was murdered in Italy while researching the Sicilian Mafia. The Mafia held a celebration of the killing, at which 20,000 people showed up, either paid or coerced, to demonstrate their power.
Petrosino’s body was returned to the US, where Roosevelt (now President), held a funeral parade that drew 200,000 people. The city gave everyone the day off to attend.
Leonardo DiCaprio will play him in an upcoming movie (The Black Hand, predicted for 2020 release).
