What's the worst museum you've ever been to?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Inspired by a recent visit to Benjamin Franklin House in London.

I’ve been to a ton of old historical homes especially in London, and this one by far has the least going on. It’s actually where Benjamin Franklin lived for 10 years iirc, but since then it’s passed through so many owners there’s literally almost nothing left from Benjamin Franklins time. In fact the house is barely furnished, what’s supposed to happen is it’s a guided tour where a person in-character as the owner when Franklin was there takes you from room to room and there’s a video that plays in each room the tour guide “interacts” with. It’s HORRENDOUSLY boring as you really are just watching videos in empty rooms where a tour guide occasionally reacts to something in said video. It just reeked of sheer laziness, they could have just had the tour guide themselves explain to you in each room what had happened in each, and at least get that bit of audience interaction besides the tour guide looking absolutely bored as they wait and listen for their cues.

2

The Rattlesnake & Venom Museum in Oklahoma City. It was like a sad, sad pet store. I visited in 2022 but I think it has been shut down since because of animal welfare issues.

3

Believe it or not, the Johnson Space Center.

You’d think that a museum right there at the heart of the space program, with access to all the best goodies, would be on par with the Smithsonian. And you’d be wrong.

Start with the parking lot. They have a lot the size of an airport and you have to pay. AND you have to pay with an app. And there’s no attendants to help.

I was informed you needed to schedule a time for entry. OOOOkay, Whatever. I get there on time, and the line stretched clear to Terre haute. And I was at the end of it. What’s the point of taking a reservation if you’re not going to honor the reservation?

So I finally make it to the entrance, and…they don’t like my ticket. The one I booked on line, paid for, and printed from their own website. So I have to go stand in line at the customer service desk.

Now it gets really annoying. The building is dark. I mean DARK. Like deep space dark. Where is the service desk? Where is the line? You can’t see a thing. Turns out it’s right in the entrance, and there’s no room. You’re bumping into, and being bumped by everyone entering the museum. Did I mention how dark it was?

Finally after like 45 minutes past my scheduled entry time, I finally make it in. And …you can’t find your way around in the dark. I must have bumped into everyone there, because you can’t see anything! Who keeps a museum so dark??

And the exhibits were…fair. With all the stuff they could get, the stuff they got was second rate. And no serious attempt to put anything in context.

The cafeteria was ok, except you have to order from kiosks. Do they tell you that? Not until you stand in line and the cook tells you he can’t take your order, you have to use the kiosk. Thanks. Nothing wrong inherently with kiosks, but…they could tell you.

The only good thing was Mission Control. We got to tour the original one and only Apollo mission control. Boy is that cool. It was an extra charge.

I was so annoyed I went on their site and complained. My comment remains unread and unreplied after 2 years.

I’ve been to a lot of air and space museums, some big, some small, and every one was better than the JSC.

4

Someplace we wandered into when we visited Innsbruck. We were hoping to see some modern art, but the whole place was taken up with one installation consisting mostly of transparent pipes with green goop inside them, running throughout all the rooms. There was also a tableau with a lab-coated mannequin and an empty refrigerator, one room which was entirely dark, and one room showing a brief film which was too boring to remember. It was free to get into this museum, and we still felt ripped off. Of course, we have had moments of pleasure throughout the years when reminiscing together, “Hey, you remember that museum in Austria that really sucked?”

5

Probably The Louvre during tourist season. Not because of the art, but because of the crush of tourists mobbing anything that has been hyped to death, like the Mona Lisa. Just standing in line to get in the place makes you want to slit your wrists. To be fair, I have also been there in the winter, when it’s not so bad.

6

The worst museum I’ve been to was actually a cave. It was both the worst show cave I’ve been to and the worst museum. It was an extremely tiny cave in Put In Bay, Ohio. Which consisted of a slit a man wide in the earth that was 20+ feet long and 10+ feet deep. Which we weren’t allowed to enter. We were just allowed to look at it for a few minutes while the guide talked about how it was an important cave in the War of 1812 because of its clean water. So that’s why I also call it a museum. The cave was more like a display in a museum that we could look at than a show cavern.

Now that I am interested in geology, it retroactively became more interesting because it was not a limestone cave but a gypsum/anhydrite cave. That’s why the cave is so small, because it’s weaker than limestone so the caves can only get so big before they collapse.

But that’s only interesting to me in theory. If I went back to Put In Bay I still wouldn’t go back to that cave. I would go back to the World’s Largest Geode, which was around the same size and we also only got to see it for a few minutes. But at least we got to walk inside it, and it was a unique and beautiful sight.

7

The Air and Space Museum. It had lots of space and air filling that space, but no space-space. You know, space that has no air. And then there was all these airplanes and stuff interrupting that space.

8

The second and third worst museums were in Cooperstown NY. The Baseball Hall of Fame may not have had a total level of interestingness higher than some of the others, but I count it as third worst because there was a lot of chaff for those few tidbits of wheat. I don’t even remember it that much, so it must not been impressively boring, merely normally boring.

The second worst was one of those outside dinosaur displays, also in Cooperstown. I count it as a museum because it had blurbs beneath each fiberglass dino describing it. But I would have preferred actual bones than a fake, poorly painted dino. And there weren’t even that many of them, maybe 8.

And my brother and I chose to go there despite vaguely knowing what it was. Our father gave us the choice between that or a boat ride on Otsego Lake. If I had to choose again, I’d chose the boat ride only because I haven’t had one in a few years. If I had, then I’d reluctantly choose the fake dinosaur museum because it would take less time.

The most fun we had on that trip was the convenience store across the street that had a mechanical baseball arcade game, which me and my brother played quite a lot. The second most fun we had was when the housekeeper put a sign under a wooden ornament in our room saying “Hi! I’m Mary, your housekeeper. Let me know if there is anything you need!” So any time we had a complaint about the room, we would direct it at the ornament, saying “Hey Mary, could you turn the heat lower? Thanks, Mary!” Both of these things were more entertaining than the two museums.

9

I also agree, Kennedy Space Center is the FAR better museum than Johnson. Johnson to me felt like it was mostly aimed at little kids, outside of the Apollo 11 Mission Control Room and the display of an Apollo rocket in a huge hanger. I had an all day plan but I think I spent most of that time watching the free IMAX and 3D movies because they ate up time.

10

Not strictly a museum, but on time I went to a zoo, and it only had one animal - a dog.

It was a shit zoo!

11

I recommend you stay away from the Vatican museum and gallery, because it’s even worse than the Louvre. The collection is genuinely astonishing, but you tour it at a slow shuffle like a human mudflow. Just miserable. (Unless you want to pay a premium for early entrance, and you get the place mostly to yourself for an hour.)

12

You can buy a museum pass which lets you skip the lines. It’s not a bad deal either if you mean to visit several museums. Just know, not all museums accept it (they tell you who does but you need to pay attention to that.) But, at least in Paris, it covered lots of the good ones you’d want to see with only a few exceptions.

Many other big cities with lots of museums have something similar. Worth checking.

13

My nomination would be the museum in Letchworth Garden City. Letchworth has an interesting history, as it was the world’s first garden city. But the ‘museum’ is just a single room with a small display of unremarkable mid-twentieth century furniture.

Museum at One Garden City - Visit Herts

I had mixed feelings about the Johnson Space Centre. The theme park bit is mostly boring, but Mission Control is genuinely iconic and the Saturn V is pretty cool.

The trick with the crowded bits of the Louvre and the Vatican Museums is to stop and actually look at stuff. I always find that other visitors, embarrassed that you are doing what they feel that they ought to be doing but aren’t, will walk round you.

14

Too late! I don’t remember it as being horrible, but I don’t think we were there during peak season. The art museums in Italy are worth a wait, for sure. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Bernini statue, even on the streets of Rome.

15

I’d go to a coprolite museum.

16

We were there last May. Yeah, there were crowds, but I don’t remember it being as bad as you describe. I think there was a longer line to get into Notre Dame. My main complaint w/ the Louvre was just that it was so damned huge. We got there right at opening, but were exhausted by 1230-1. Didn’t recall the Met being so fatiguing.

17

I went to the Louvre and to the Vatican many years ago, and perhaps they are worse, now. But i liked both of them well enough.

If we expand the category from “museum” to “tourist attraction”, the quest that I’ve been taken to on a tour was a mall in Japan. It was a “garden mall”, and our guide assured us that many Japanese spent the day there. “Garden” doesn’t mean there were gardens. I think it meant that it was an open-air thing, with outdoor pathways instead of air-conditioned corridors. They had Coach shop, and a mountain hardgear shop, and many other brands i shop at home. And 4 mediocre restaurants, and some pretty good public toilets. And we were stuck there from 2-4:30. :laughing:

18

Here you go: The Poozeum, in Williams AZ

19

The most disappointing museum for me was the one next to Meteor Crater in northern Arizona. I was there in 1994, and the museum was about the crater, which was OK, and the U.S. space program, pretty much ending with the end of the Apollo program. IIRC, it was free, and that’s how much it was worth.

Some people have expressed disappointment in the Roswell, NM museum, which I visited in 2007. No, it wasn’t high tech, but it was fine for what it was.

20

I can agree with this. I happened to be driving by so figured why not? I should check it out.

It’s a giant hole in the ground. Which is kinda cool but how long can you stare at it and find it interesting? Not sure I would call the visitor center a “museum” but yeah…small place that tells you how it was formed and whatnot. Cool but there is not a whole lot to tell. Big rock hit planet. No surprise how that worked out.

If you happen to be driving by then sure, give it a go but certainly not worth a special trip. It’s in the middle of nowhere and not close to anything. Petrified forest was lame too. Mainly lots of rocks which you are told used to be trees. I believe them but still…just rocks.

Add in Four Corners. Also middle of nowhere. You can say you were in four states at the same time. That’s about it.