New York: Remember when you were a kid on vacation and your mom dragged you from the beach to take you to some dry-as-dust museum for a "wonderful educational experience?"
You poked along past exhibit after exhibit wondering when it would ever end, as your mom extolled the virtues of the patina on some pewter candlesticks.
Dad didn't look too happy either and the art critic in you would rather go to MOBA (the Museum of Bad Art).
It doesn't have to be that way anymore.
The museum-going experience calls to mind the son of a friend named Lucas.
He was about 16 at the time and, after a couple of weeks spent with his family enduring the cultural treasures of Tuscany, with their Fra Filippo Lippis, Michelangelo's, da Vincis and church art of every age, the family finally wound up in a very special place in San Gimignano: the Museum of Torture.
The museum's extensive collection includes more than 100 devices ranging from thumbscrews to iron maidens."You have every form of torture known to man here," Lucas wrote in the museum comment book, "except for the family vacation."
He would have had a lot more fun if the family had visited some of the museums of oddities that America seems amply blessed with.
These range from ones focused on pop culture to more serious studies of the esoteric and anomolies.
It seems like there's a museum for nearly every interest. And if there isn't one for something you cared about, start one yourself.
Louise Sacco, a curator with MOBA, recommends that. She says her involvement with pushing bad art before has been "great fun".
And many of the founders of these unusual institutions have become minor celebrities, appearing on such television shows as I've Got a Secret to The Tonight Show.
But more than anything else, visiting one of these museums may be the perfect way to spice up a family vacation. It may be the only part of the trip your teenager even remembers.
Next Page: Museum of Bad Art - Dedham, Massachusetts
PAGE_BREAK
Museum of Bad Art - Dedham, Massachusetts
Some of the most incredibly horrible paintings and sculptures in the world can be viewed at the Museum of Bad Art near Boston.
The museum has its origins in the early 1990s in the activities of an antiques dealer, Scott Wilson. "He was cruising the streets of Boston on trash night," says the museum's permanent acting interim executive director, Louise Sacco, "when he found it."
"It" was a monumentally bad work of art that he rescued from a pile of trash - and from sure destruction.
Wilson figured he would discard and keep the frame. But when he showed the painting, called Lucy in the Field with Flowers, to his friend Jerry Reilly he got an unexpected reaction. PICTURE (248*178) IN A STORY:
Reilly liked it. "It was so bad, it's good! I'll take it," he said.
Reilly hung the painting in his home and, like bacteria, it quickly multiplied. Friends and family would see it, dig out their own bad art and give it to him. Soon he had enough to start a whole museum in his basement.
On opening night he invited 50 friends, neighbors and family but many of these called others to come see the works and before long there were more than 200 people viewing the collection, according to Sacco.
Since then, it has grown to about 300 pieces and a revolving display of about 25 items is available for viewing at a movie theater in Dedham. Bad art aficionados can also sate their appetites online, where the entire collection is available for their appreciation.
Cockroach Hall of Fame Museum - Plano, Texas
Michael Bohdan, zoologist, entomologist, professional exterminator and author of What's Bugging You? had his epiphany more than 20 years ago as he gazed at wanted posters while waiting in line at the post office.
Why not rig up a wanted poster for Dallas's biggest cockroach and hold a contest to pick a winner.
The rest, as they say, is history. CNN picked up the story and the next thing Bohdan knew, he was appearing on the Tonight Show. Clorox (CLX), the maker of the roach pesticide Combat, asked Bohdan to run these contests all around the country. He did just that for the next four years.
Bohdan asked if he could keep the prize winners and Combat, happily, I'm sure, let him. And so he began the Hall of Fame.
Exhibits include Ross Peroach, Marilyn Monroach and Liberoachie, a piano-playing vermin. (The museum is something of a hall of fame for roach puns as well.)
When he started the museum, the city fathers did not exactly welcome him with open arms. "The city of Plano wouldn't even acknowledge my existence at first," says Bohdan, who prefers to be called Cockroach Dundee.
That changed when Good Morning America sent a crew down to do a segment.
Today, Bohdan exterminates in the morning and curates the museum in the afternoon. He says many of the visitors come in only reluctantly, but they soon warm up to the show.
"When you see a roach dressed in a tutu, it's hard to be afraid of them."
Comments
0 comment