Trigger Warning: mental illnesses, brutal treatment practices
Museums, in their primary, obsolete form, were private collections of wealthy people and families or fell under the notion of institutions of art and weird/rare physical objects. The first museum, by the name of Ennigaldi-Nanna, dates back to 530 BC and exhibited antiquities from Mesopotamia.
In honor of International Museum Day, let’s have a look at the most peculiar museums in the world:
- The Glore Psychiatric Museum: Located in St. Joseph in Missouri, this specific museum exhibits the mental diseases and their -brutal- way of treatment in the USA, over the past centuries. The museum includes shocking exhibits, such as tools for removing pieces of the frontal lobe of the brain, staff uniforms, a chair where the patients were tied, the so-called Tranquilizing Chair, as well as the “Lunatic Box,” which imposed the torment of standing on the suffering people. In the museum, you can also see artistic creations of patients. A romantic place, ideal for lovely couples!
- The Sewer Museum: All of us, at some point in our lives, desired to learn about the Paris sewer system and its history: The Sewer Museum is the right place to do that. It spreads to an area of 2,000 km of the underground terrain of the capital of France and includes old and contemporary drains equipment, sewers workers’ clothing, huge wooden balls that were used for the decontamination of the tunnels underneath the Seine as well as exhibits related to the history and design of the network. And all of the above in a fragrant environment!
- The Museum of Broken Relationships: Located in Zagreb, Croatia, the museum originated in the breaking up of two artists, who nominated the objects they exchanged during their relationship into museum exhibits. The museum has an experiential character, given that visitors from all around the globe are invited to donate objects from their previous relationships, accompanied by a brief description. Moreover, on the museum website, thousands of broken-hearted people can share their pain, declaring the setting of the breaking up, photographs, and the related story. Love is in the air!
- The Phallological Museum: In Reykjavík, Iceland, a powerful punch is given against all the taboos through a museum that is in fact hardly obscene. The museum exhibits penises of 268 mammals, some of which belong to seals, elephants, horses, whales, hamsters. The owner of the museum cooperates with breeders, hunters, slaughterhouses, and research institutes, which assume the role of a donor. The museum is also recommended for school trips!
- The Underwater Museum of Art: Extended to 420m2, this special museum is located in the town Cancún, Mexico and more specifically at the bottom of the sea. It lists more than 500 statues, sculpted with special cement, for the purpose of protecting aquatic life. In this way, it evinces the relationship between art-environment and invites the visitors to tour by a boat, a diving suit, or by scuba diving. Let’s go to the beach-each, let’s go get a wave!
- The Deutsches Currywurst Museum: In the heart of Berlin, there is a museum that is dedicated to currywurst, the notorious sausage with curry that slays in Germany for the last 70 years. The museum is interactive and includes games on computers, guided tours with the currywurst van, the possibility of “creating” your own sausages, sofas-armchairs in the form of a sausage and -obviously- a coveted canteen. Knowledge is passing through our stomachs!
- The Derwent Pencil Museum: It is located in Keswick, England and it undertakes to inform in an alternative way about the history of graphite and the construction of pencils through quizzes and artistic exhibits, while the ticket is also a pencil. The museum hosts the biggest pencil in the world, which is award-winning with a Guinness, 9 meters high and weighing 500 kilos!
- The Museum of Bad Art: It is located in Massachusetts, USA and lists about 600 paintings in which…something went wrong. These paintings are incomplete, inelegant, and peculiar, although they are not tedious. A characteristic feature is that they were constructed with pure motives by their creators, but later on they failed and today they achieve their fame in another way. The museum enriches its collection from flea markets, artists that admit the anti-aesthetic element of their works, even from rubbish bins. Learn a job and leave it.
- The Barbed Wire Museum: In Kansas, USA a whole museum is raised in honor of the material that facilitated the development of contemporary America. The exhibition of the Barbed Wire Museum presents the history of barbed wire, which, primarily, was the means of attiring big pieces of land in an attempt to limit the movements of the cattle and other cage-free animals.
- The Toilet Seat Museum: This museum emerged out of the imaginative idea of a retired plumber, who decided to transform toilet lids and seats into pieces of art, by painting and sticking several materials on them. In the museum garage in Texas, there are more than 1,000 special creative toilet seats, and as a consequence, a makeshift entertaining museum is born. Relaxing!
The museum is an alternative educational place that deviates from the sealant form of educational institutions. It renders the education experiential, offers visual and cognitive motives of various topics, familiarizes the visitors with “rare and high forms of art that have functioned as scenic belts for the ascension of the international aesthetic and the cultural drop curtain.” As a source and depositary of the culture and the collective national and historical consciousness, it contributes, in an elaborate way, to the spherical and pluralistic education of the people and it offers a redemptive gaze into the past, the present and -why not- the future: the museum offers the people the stimuli to think, to act and to evolve.
What is of special importance is, of course, the communicative role the museums play. The exhibits of the museums, promoting amusement, the real delight of the human soul (and not just the rampant entertainment), contribute to the communication of a person with another person, but also with the object and its powerful symbolism. Consequently, it is not worth asking that we feel overflooded with awe, interacting with indelible “spots” of human life as time passes. Moreover, we should not neglect the joy, enthusiasm, and inspiration of the discovery that the museums offer generously to the audience.
Happy birthday museums, be proud of you!
Sources:
https://mikropragmata.lifo.gr/listes/afta-einai-ta-5-pio-efialtika-mouseia-ston-kosmo/
https://www.travelstyle.gr/soakroun-ta-10-pio-musthriwdh-mouseia-kosmo/
http://valueforlife.gr/free-time/ta-paraksena-mouseia-tou-kosmou-ekthemata-gia-apoxetefsi-dialymenes-sxeseis-kapakia-toualetas-kai-tsantes/
https://www.iefimerida.gr/news/52371/αυτά-είναι-τα-μουσεία-με-τα-πιο-περίεργα-εκθέματα-του-κόσμου
Photography by Evelina Papadopoulou
