And ya know what else is right there…the clown museum.
Also, House On The Rock.
And, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin East.
In Milwaukee we have a (the?) Bobblehead Hall Of Fame/Museum.
One of the Bobbleheads, Dominic The Food Reviewer, is a regular customer of mine.
A couple of unique museums in New Mexico:
In Aztec, the Aztec Ruins National Monument is the main attraction. But on the other side of town is the Aztec Museum & Pioneer Village, absolutely worth a visit to see the crown jewel of the collection, the Pecos West Cyclorama.
In Farmington there’s the B-Square Ranch, home of the Bolack Electromechanical Museum and Museum of Fish & Wildlife The owner died several years ago, so I don’t know if they’re still open to the public.
There is a dulcimer museum in Sperryville, VA that I keep meaning to visit and a yerba mate museum in Coyhaique, Chile that is closed every time I’ve been in town.
There’s a fun one in Seattle, too, in an old telephone switching station.
This Museum Is Not Obsolete, In England. It’s full of old (obsolete) music and telephony equipment.
I’ve never been there (or to England, for that matter). I only know it because of two youtube channels that I follow. Look Mum No Computer and This Museum Is (Not) Obsolete.
And this playlist of him buying, moving and reassembling an enormous pipe organ is a good watch.
Chihuly Garden and Glass in Seattle is an entire museum dedicated to the glass sculptures of Dale Chihuly, and there’s the more general but still very Chihuly-centered Museum of Glass not that far away in Tacoma.
Seattle also has a Pinball Museum, which is actually more of an arcade where all the machines are playable for a flat admission fee. Not nearly as big as the one in Vegas, though.
The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh is an entire building (seven floors + the basement) and is the largest single-artist museum in North America. It’s organized chronologically so you start with his earliest works on the seventh floor and work your way down.
Both are quite beautiful and worth visiting, despite their specialization.
I’ve been to the former, but not the latter. I don’t know much about glass art, but it’s definitely fascinating stuff, and they do live demonstrations of the glassblowing process that were very interesting.
Feel free to look up the thread where I found out about how one of my coworkers was involved in a scheme to steal “damaged” sculptures from Chihuly’s warehouse and sell them on the black market.
The Spam Museum in Austin MN is one of my favorites. I have visited it twice–once in about 2002 in its former digs and once in 2016 in its new-and-improved home.
I much prefer the latter. Plus you can also visit the WA State History Museum (very much worth a trip - check out the model train exhibit) and/or Tacoma Art Museum while you’re there.
Perhaps I’ll make a point of it the next time I have a reason to go to Tacoma. I worked in Tacoma (commuting from Olympia) for six years but never really explored it much, and these days I usually only find myself there if I’m passing through on my way to Seattle or to visit my sister in Sumner, or if I’m going to a show at the Tacoma Dome (which I’m honestly surprised STILL hasn’t sold its naming rights to some corporation like every other large arena or stadium in the country).
The Newseum closed shortly after this post appeared.
I visited the Merry-Go-Round Museum in Sandusky, Ohio. Rode on a vintage go-round with mechanical music.
Is there still a McDonald’s in Tacoma with a Chihuly?
Side note: The McMenamin’s there is also fun: Elks Temple Hotel - McMenamins
It used to be an Elks Lodge, but it was bought and restored into a hotel/restaurants/basement tiki bar/dance floor/music venue/garden. Some of the history remains, and the architecture is still cool.
(McMenamins is a Pacific Northwest family-owned chain of hotels/pubs/restaurants that buy up old historic properties and turn them into quirky tourist places, while keeping much of the original vibes)
You missed the Old Town Albuquerque tourist trap that still manages to be fun:
The International Rattlesnake Museum
I’d say that’s pretty darn specialized and an unusual topic, with (per wiki) 34 live snakes on premises. Though it’s been at least ten years since I was there last.
They’ve got one in Olympia, an old diner from the ‘30s called the Spar. The original business ran up until about 20 years ago, when the indoor smoking ban did them in (they were also a tobacco merchant and smokers were a large part of their clientele). They’ve kept the original decor. The menu is a little generic but their fish & chips are decent.
The Spar also had a sister location up near the Stadium district that I think is still in business.
Not sure, but about ten years ago or so I saw Mick Foley do a spoken word show at a comedy club in Bellevue. It was on the third floor of an indoor mall, and just outside the entrance was a balcony with a massive Chihuly on the ground floor, and I quipped to my friend who I was there with that it looked like something Foley would have done a dive onto back in his wrestling days.
I’ll raise you with the Musée des Arts Forains in Paris
And the Speelklok (mechanical musical instruments) in Utrecht