Zymoglyphic Museum - Recommended Museums

Recommended Museums

A helpful list of museums and similar institutions whose themes resonate with those of the Zymoglyphic Museum. For more information, see the Curator's Web log For a virtual tour of personal museums of the Baroque era, see here.

Inspected by the museum staff and found worthy of recommendation to travelers. Listings without stars have not been visited but are presumed to be worth seeing
No longer extant, but its impact lingers on

Convenient internet links and book references are provided for patrons for whom travel is not a possibility or who wish a preview of the associated institutions.

Of Sea and Shore Museum of Shells and Sealife, Port Gamble, Washington: Occupies the upper floor of an old general store in a small town across Puget Sound from Seattle. Excellent crab collection.
Steve's Weird House, Seattle, Washington: Virtual reality tour of a private house in Seattle crammed with stuff. via Kircher Society.
Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, Seattle, Washington: Selling Indian artifacts and curiosities since 1899. Display of mummies, shrunken heads and a merman.; Book: 1001 Curious Things: Ye Olde Curiosity Shop and Native American Art
Marsh's Free Museum, Long Beach, Washington
Wonders of the World Museum, Port Costa, California: Dr. Gladstone's exhibition of Kaolithic curiosities and other wonders is gone, but you can still pick up a souvenir Homo ceramicus skull! Curator's Web log entry
Ripley's Believe It or Not! Museum, San Francisco, California: A local outlet of the 20th century's biggest curiosity cabinet. This Fisherman's Wharf location still has the feel of early 20th century expeditions to strange lands.
Musee Mechanique, San Francisco, California: A collection of vintage automata and coin-operated dioramas
de Young Museum, San Francisco, California: Once the city's curiosity cabinet, now noted for its collections of African, Oceanic, and pre-Columbian artifacts.
The Exploratorium, San Francisco, California: A giant hall of mechanical and optical wonders. Often displays art based on physical, chemical, and biological processes. For an example, see the Turbulent Landscapes exhibit of 2000.
Rosicrucian Museum, San Jose, California: A modern mystical order displays its fascination with its roots in ancient Egypt
Monterey Bay Aquarium, Monterey, California: Huge collection of underwater wonders. Highlights are jellyfish as living art and a Zymoglyphic-like tank of animals making their briny homes in discarded underwater junk.
The Museum of Jurassic Technology, Culver City, California: A museum of enigmatic exhibits devoted to the preservation of knowledge that would otherwise be lost. Curator's Web log entry; Book: Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder : Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology
U.S. Atlantic Coast
Metropolitan Museum, New York, New York: A giant collection of art and antiquities from everywhere. The "primitive" art collection is especially recommended, since pieces were selected more aesthetically than ethnographically.; Book: Masterpieces of Primitive Art (The Nelson A. Rockefeller collection)
American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York: Classic natural history dioramas and an incredible rock and meteorite collection; Book: Windows on Nature: The Great Habitat Dioramas of the American Museum of Natural History
Coney Island Museum, New York, New York: Has the last sideshow in Coney Island - tattooed women, fire-eaters, sword-swallowers, etc.
Freakatorium, New York, New York closed 2005
P.T. Barnum's American Museum, New York, New York: Barnum's pioneering combination of education, spectacle and hokum. Burned in 1865 and recreated online.
Mutter Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: America's premier medical museum. Noted for its annual calendars featuring photographs of the museum's collection by noted photographers such as Rosamond Purcell and Joel-Peter Witkin.; Book: Mutter Museum: Of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia
American Dime Museum, Baltimore, Maryland: In 19th century America, the "wonder" part of museums became more associated with circus sideshows and "dime museums" such as P.T. Barnum's. This museum was dedicated to preserving their memory. Closed 2007; Book: Weird & Wonderful: The Dime Museum in America
Palace of Wonders, Washington, D.C.: "The only vaudeville stage, museum of oddities, and full bar in the world!"
Belhaven Memorial Museum, Belhaven, North Carolina: An individual collector's amazing amassment of oddities
Cypress Knee Museum, Palmdale, Florida: This was both a classic Florida roadside attraction and an excellent example of natural art. Closed in 2000 due to vandalism and theft.
Other U.S.
Tinkertown Museum, Sandia, New Mexico
Menil Collection, Houston, Texas
Museum of Natural and Artificial Ephemerata, Austin, Texas
UCM Museum, Abita Springs, Louisiana
England
Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford: A Victorian ethnographic museum, with rows of vitrines filled with a huge variety of human artifacts.
Snowshill Manor, Snowshill: Charles Wade spent the first half of the 20th century filling his manor house with objects of all kinds.
Sir John Soane's Museum, London: An 18th century London architect who made his home into a museum of art and antiquities
Hunterian Museum, London: Anatomical and medical museum based on the collections of an 18th century surgeon.
Potter's Museum of Curiosity, Cornwall: A Victorian taxidermist's collection of stuffed animals in anthropomorphic scenes. Auctioned off in 2003. For more information, see here
Continental Europe
Musee Fragonard, Paris, France: Museum devoted to the pioneering preservation work of the 18th century French anatomist Honore Fragonard; Book (in French): L'autre Fragonard (Imager)
Musee Robert Tatin, Cossé-le-Vivien, France: An incredible personal sculpture and art museum in an old farmhouse in rural France.
Museum of Petrification, Savonniers, France: Petrifying springs coat objects left in them with layers of limestone. Via Kircher Society
Kunstkammer Georg Laue, Munich, Germany: A gallery that specializes in objects you might find in a princely cabinet of curiosities
Schloss Ambras, Innsbruck, Austria: The "Chamber of Art and Curiosities" is a reconstruction of Archduke Ferdinand II's princely cabinet from ca. 1600
Peter the Great's Kunstkammer, St. Petersburg, Russia: Opened in 1714 to showcase the Russian czar's collection of wonders, now an anthropology museum
Recommended tour guides to museums in the U.S. and Europe
Little Known Museums in and Around Paris
Little-Known Museums in and Around London Also available for Rome and Berlin
Little Museums: Over 1,000 Small (And Not-So-Small) American Showplaces
Web Site
Roadside America is an excellent source for updated news on roadside attractions, including the small museums that often do not survive indefinitely