FUN MUSEUM COLLECTIONS

COLLECTIONS CORNER

BY: KATLYN WOODER

Here is a list of museums from around the world that host fun collections. Places that all call themselves museums, but are vastly different from each other, and whose collection are the centre of their identity. I am tickled pink about Gopher's Fishing.

MUSA Underwater Museum of Art
Located at Blvd. Kukulcan, Zona Hotelera, 77500 Cancún, Q.R., Mexico

Founded in 2009, this a museum where you have to dive underwater (or go on a glass bottom boat) to visit monumental sculptures, and see how the sea life slowly consumes them back into the underwater landscape. It is a museum dedicated to conservation, the website is HERE.

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Warrior Toy Museum
Located at St George’s Street (next to the Town Hall) | Simon’s Town | +27 (0)21 786 1395

In Cape Town you can go see a museum dedicated to showing off historic toys, it also functions as a shop where toy enthusiasts can purchase those missing pieces from their collections. A place where adults return to childhood. One of the reason why this museum drew my eye is because a caption from HERE, “Two impressive displays include a battalion of toy soldiers warding off Zulus attacking with spears in ox-formation and also a full Nazi parade with marching Hitler Youth and a small Adolf Hitler saluting his army…” I have to wonder how this museum is dealing with political correctness and racial tension in South Africa?


Romanian Kitsch Museum
Located at Strada Covaci 6, București 030094, Romania

A museum that remembers the 80s and celebrates it. Full of sarcasm, traditions, and local cultural knowledge that manifests through humor.

The Museum of Jurassic Technology
Located at 9341 Venice Blvd, Culver City, CA 90232, USA

A place that challenges what a museum should be, because all the objects reference real things but aren't always believable. It is a place full of curiosity and wonder, where exhibits are put on to intrigue and test boundaries of what you think you know and what is a curiosity. The website is located HERE.


Vulcan Tourism & Trek Station
Located at 115 Centre St E, Vulcan, AB T0L 2B0, Canada

Okay, so this one isn't so much about the collection, but really I couldn't resist it. I mean, who can turn down Spock? Not me. It is the Home of Spock. Seriously, it's in a place called Vulcan in Alberta. A town of 2000 have decided to present a Star Trek dreamland, where the information centre is designed to look like a space ship. The website is HERE.

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Alberta also has the Gopher Hole Museum
Located at 208 1 Street South, Torrington, Alberta
This museum is dedicated to gophers, but not their life cycles. Instead the museum has multiple diagrams in boxes where gophers are fishing, curling, and preaching. A fun museum full of imagination and whimsy. The website is HERE.

Photo courtesy of Gopher Hole Museum. Source. 

If you're interested in other special museums (specifically food museums): Beijing Shi has the Daxing Watermelon Museum, Prince Edward Island has a Potato Museum, England has a Carrot Museum, and Italy has at the Museum of Tomato. People really do love food, and all the industries that rely on it.

Each of these attractions call themselves a museum; that is an identity, but one that is flexible enough that people can take an interest and best represent it to fit the community or the mission of the museum. From wacky to childhood to experimental, there is a place out there, and you can find it.

HAVE FUN BECAUSE THESE MUSEUMS ARE