In the Cat's Mouth, acrylic on canvas, probably by Pangorda, acquired by Tom Stankowicz from the Children's Hospital Thrift Store. A comment on issues of power as experienced by those who dwell with feline pets. Is the artist consumed with or consumed by his love for this cat? Does he identify with the personality of the startling animal? Does the similarity between these inseparable cohabitants stop short at the nose? Or is he simply trying to observe a treelined avenue through a cat's eyes?
While some museums are devoted to pain, others favor pleasure.
I wrote about New York City’s Museum of Sex in STEP’s
July/August 2004 issue (there are a number of other sex museums
worldwide). In Prague, however, the SEX MACHINE MUSEUM specializes
in “mechanical erotic appliances, the purpose of which is
to bring pleasure and allow extraordinary and unusual positions
during intercourse.” Over 200 such devices are on display, accompanied
by some very flexible dummies.
The CENTER FOR UNUSUAL MUSEUMS in Munich houses not
one but seven eccentric museums: the Pedal Car Museum, the
Chamber Pot Museum (more than 2,000 examples are displayed),
the Bourdalou Museum (these were fancy portable chamber pots
for French noblewomen in the 18th and 19th centuries), the Easter
Bunny Museum, the Museum of Scent, the Guardian Angel
Museum, and a museum devoted to Empress Elisabeth of Austria.
Founded on the theory that all art needs a home, the museum
of bad art in Dedham, Mass., describes its collection as ranging
from “the work of talented artists that have gone awry, to works of
exuberant, although crude, execution by artists barely in control
of the brush.” MOBA is dedicated to the collection, preservation,
exhibition, and celebration of bad art in all its forms, and is located
in the basement of the Dedham Community Theater, conveniently
located just outside the men’s room. Museum volunteers claim that
“the nearby flushing helps maintain a uniform humidity.”
Swamette's Secret, acrylic on canvas by Unknown, acquired by Patricia Deardoroff and Leigh Weesner from a San Diego Thrift Store. Calm, clear shapes, multiple repeating patterns, a thickly textured aura, and little red shoes come together to conceal or reveal the eternal complexity of simple truths in this exploration of the human psyche.
There is no end of ordinary objects that have been celebrated
and showcased ... the
KENNETH W. BERGER HEARING AID MUSEUM
at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, has more than 3,000 hearing
aids from around the world. At
LEILA'S HAIR MUSEUM in Independence,
Mo., there are 159 wreaths made from human hair and
over 2,000 pieces of jewelry containing or made of human hair
dating before 1900. the
INTERNATIONAL TOWING MUSEUM'S
(Chattanooga, Tenn.) mission is “to preserve the history of the
towing and recovery industry.”
Each of these museums offers up its treasures; documented,
lit, and framed, elevated from the realm of the sometimes mundane.
Each is in its own way a tribute to obsession. Paying homage
to ordinary things, pulled out of their ordinary surroundings,
made more important by multiplication, fills a basic human need:
It brings together odd fellows so they may share and indulge their
passions. After all, who is qualified to distinguish that which is
simply odd from that which is extraordinary?
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