The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY
Hyde was an avid art collector and had a good eye for art. The museum is in his home, which gives it an intimate feeling. My first time there, I was strolling around what was the library (books still there) and came across a painting that really caught my eye. After I looked at it, I checked out the artist: Rembrandt.
The place is full of that sort of surprise: well-know artists in an unassuming setting.
The Sembrich, Bolton Landing, NY
Marcella Sembrich was a big opera star of around 1900; this was her cottage on Lake George. Charming memorabilia, plus a walkway along the lake.
I generally like big museums like the Met in New York, the British Museum, the museums on the Museumsinsel in Berlin.
Like Cervaise, I was also pleasantly surprised by the National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam. I particularly remember the room explaining navigational devices through the ages (with hands-on displays) and the gallery of naval paintings.
Other museums I haven’t seen mentioned yet:
The Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto. Footwear through the ages and from around the world. My favourite was a pair of giant wicker boots from Japan that were used for creating trails through snowdrifts.
Osaka Castle. The exhibits inside were very informative and it looks amazing from the outside.
Also nearby is the Barnes Foundation museum. A very small art museum but with a fantastic collection of Impressionist paintings, including over 100 by Renoir.
Libraries are underrated when it comes to exhibits, resources and just general ambiance. I liked my visit to the New York Public Library way more than my visit to the MMA when I was last in NYC (though granted that was ages ago). Also enjoy the British Library a lot more than the British Museum.
I did not know this even existed! I’ve been to WWI battlefields in Europe, and exhibits both there and in Canada, but since the US came late to the party, so to speak, WWI doesn’t seem to get much attention here. I don’t know if I’ll ever end up in Kansas, but if I do, this is definitely something I will check out.
I went there, but years ago, obviously. I did just go to the Computer History Museum last fall, and it was very good.
A couple more worth mentioning:
The Museum of Printing, in Haverhill, Massachusetts. It’s small, and off the beaten path, but I enjoyed it. Thee’s a collection of old bibles from the colonial era, old printing presses, recent typesetting equipment (including a working Linotype machine), photo-typesetting equipment, typewriters, and some rare personal computers. Boston-area dopers should check it out.
The Museum of Glass in Corning, New York. There’s a section of glass art with demonstrations of glass blowing, an historic section (glassware from different eras in history), and a scientific section (glass manufacturing, and things like telescope mirrors).
Norton Simon - simply fantastic. The Getty Center - Not only a wonderful museum, but the views of the surrounding area are incredible. The Smithsonian - No matter how much time I’ve spent there, it’s never enough.
Growing up in DC we’re kind of spoiled for museums, but outside of that my favorite “museum” that I’ve visited, if it may be classified as such, is the botanical garden at the New Orleans City Park. My wife is a horticulturalist so of course she wanted to go there and loved it, but it was genuinely interesting and enjoyable to me, not a horticulturalist. It was well organized and well maintained. Every time you walked into a new area it was something different.
As for a more traditional museum, count me among the Mutter Museum fans. Very morbid, very much an old-school sideshow kind of vibe, but not in an exploitative way.
The Gutenburg Museum in Mainz was very thorough. Very cool cathedral across the square.
Very much a museum lover. Loved so many of those mentioned above. I have some personal obsessions, so perhaps these are not so much to the general interest, but I simply adored:
Takenaka Carpentry Tools Museum Japanese woodworking tools are famed for high quality, used all over the world today by hand woodworkers. See every possible variety, old and new. Great examples of joinery as well. They also have a great Youtube channel
Oh, and then there was the clown museum in Baraboo, WI. Sorry, the “International Clown Hall of Fame and Research Center.”
My wife and I were stopping in Wisconsin Dells on our way to Minneapolis and my Happy Cow app directed us to a vegetarian restaurant nearby in Baraboo, Wisconsin. While we were waiting for our food to come out I was looking at the map on my phone and saw that the International Clown Hall of Fame and Research Center just happened to be right across the street. This led to Wikipedia-ing the town and learning it was where the Ringling Bros grew up and started their circus. Anyways, the moment I saw that I was like “Oh my god we need to go to this place the moment we’re finished here!”
While the name made me picture clowns in full makeup wearing lab coats doing chemistry, it was really just a room full of clown stuff, but you get a personal tour by an actual Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus clown who will tell you everything you did and didn’t want to know about clowns, which might sound horrifying but it was actually pretty interesting and fun. I’ve never even been to the circus and I had a good time.
There was also a really cool toy store in Baraboo if you’re ever there.
The description is interesting. They have P.T. Barnum’s copy of the Cardiff Giant. Having seen the original Cardiff Giant at the Farmer’s Museum in Cooperstown NY, I’m curious. (Barnum tried to buy the original, was turned down, and had a copy made which he exhibited instead.)
If you like Marvin’s you’d probably also like Funspot, listed by Guiness as the “largest arcade in the World”, which contains the American Classic Arcade Museum, which contains what they claim is the largest collection of pinball and video games in the world. Not all are out on display. All but, I think, two of those on display are playable, so if you really want to play that ancient video game, this is where to come. I played Pong here with my daughter on a game older than her. There’s a slew of Pac Man games, Dragon’s Lair, Space Ace, Star Wars, Defender, and a host of others. In Laconia, NH, on Route 3 north of Weir’s Beach.
One of Funspot’s logos is the dragon Topsnuf (figure it out), but the older one is a jester, drawn by Bob Montana of nearby Meredith. Montana created Archie Andrews and the whiole Riverdale gang, and he based his jester on Jughead Jones.
I grew up near DC and the place has an embarrassment of museum riches, mostly under the Smithsonian umbrella. My personal favorite art museum there is the National Portrait Gallery/Museum of American Art (The two share a building).
The International Spy Museum is also a kick; when I was last in DC, the Spy Museum was housed in the old headquarters of the American Communist Party, and across the street from the J Edgar Hoover FBI headquarters. (I think both buildings have been repurposed, or will be soon.) Per WIKI, " The museum opened in 2002 in the Penn Quarter neighborhood of Washington, D.C., and relocated to L’Enfant Plaza in 2019." They compared how spies conduct their business with the way they are depicted in movies and other popular culture, had filmed interviews with Cold War notables from the CIA and KGB, and pointed out that over 4,000 working secret agents worked within two blocks of the building. Their gift shop had the best gadgets!
DC also had the National Museum of Crime and Punishment (closed in 2015 and relocated to Pigeon Forge, TN). Fascinating stuff, but it occurred to me that most of the crime they showed cops fighting was stuff that is no longer illegal, like bootleg whiskey and witchcraft.
My favorite museum in the world is Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The Louvre is such a stampede, and it cuts off at the Age of Napoleon. d’Orsay focuses on the 19th Century, especially the Impressionists, the era I’m most interested in. (I haven’t been to Centre Pompidou yet, where the modern stuff is kept, I bet it’s wonderful, too).
Pompidou is absolutely terrific. I loved almost everything about it. I didn’t mention it in my post above because I mentally included it in the “big famous places that don’t need extra promotion” caveat. But since you bring it up, yeah, it’s great.
It is very cool, and I’m speaking as someone who’s visited the Imperial War Museum in London, the Natl. WWII Museum in New Orleans, the British Army Museum in London (Chelsea), the Musée de l’Armée at Les Invalides, and a bunch of lesser military and aviation museums here in the US.
It’s very thoughtfully laid out- it’s basically a large semicircle that starts on the right in 1913 or so, and continues around to 1918. And it’s a bit more intellectual than the WWII museum, I felt. Plus it’s part of the larger National WWI Memorial (formerly the Liberty Memorial) opened in 1926.
If you’ve got kids, there’s a fantastic kids science museum across the street in the Union Station. It’s really well done as such things go, as well.
