The tech museum in San Jose. I fucking love that place.
this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2024
105 points (99.1% liked)
Ask Lemmy
26250 readers
1368 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I would say Teylers Museum in Haarlem, the Netherlands:
We went to the Museum of Sex after we got married in New York City at City Hall. It sure was memorable lol.
My favourite museum is the Whitney Museum in NYC because it has one of the gargantuan paintings by my favourite artist Alex Katz.
Museum and gallery inside the Villa Borghese in Rome.
Omegamart in Vegas. Might not be a ‘museum’, but is a really cool interactive art facility.
Kennedy Space center is amazing.
The museum of flight in Seattle.
Natural history museum in NYC
And I really love history museums in different cities to learn about their past.
This is probably not in the same categories as other experiences, buuuut the Guinness museum in Dublin the evening before st Patrick's day was quite fun!
There's a large bar at the top/end of the museum and a band was playing and 100 or so people ended up in a conga line.
I think I had 4 tasty Guinness during the museum tour sand countless at the museum bar😅
I got to activate a historic "Wigwag" at the St. Thomas Elgin Railway Museum. This was an awesome experience for me, as wigwags are extremely rare nowadays and especially in Canada. The museum staff seemed delighted that I knew exactly what it was, as they're rather obscure outside of railfanning circles.
I took a video of it as well: https://youtu.be/TrhnffDZGWc?si=Ox-iCUKXBbhlxE72
I really enjoyed the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
The Wydah Pirate Museum in Cape Cod MA - it's a smaller museum but it's packed full of artifacts recovered from the wreck of an actual golden age of piracy ship (the Wydah, Black Sam Belamy's ship which wrecked in Cape Cod). They have multiple weapons, cannons, and the only confirmed pirate treasure ever recovered. All the artifacts were just super cool, very few recreations of things almost everything is really from the actual wreck. The excavation of the wreck site is ongoing too, the last room in the museum is dedicated to showing how they recover items that have been encased in "concretions" and has lots of items actively being recovered so you can see the process happening.
Idk, I'm a golden age of piracy nerd for sure so this was super cool to me.
Oh that's so cool!
The Computerspielemuseum or Computer Game Museum in Berlin.
It has 3 rooms setup as timecapsules with a console setup in each.
The highlight was the PainStation where you played Pong against another player, and the loser got whipped, an electric shock or heat applied to their hand through a panel on the game. Excellent.
Special mentions, 1.5hrs in front of Bosch's, Garden of Earthly Delights tryptich in the Prado.
Momi (The Museum of the Moving Image, London) closed in 2002, but had the full history of all cinema. Live period actors jumping out to explain things. I snuck a touch of the foot of the actual K1 Giant Robot from Tom Baker's Dr Who.
Also, the Musée d'Orsay. Just a beautiful experience of so many classics.
Seconding Computer games Museum in Berlin. I didn't like the pain Station (the whip is way to harsh, I think) but beging able to try out so many older games is amazing.
Musée Robert Tatin. Robert Tatin created an Univers of art naïf around his tiny house that become later a museum.
It's a mix of sculpture and painting, outside and inside. People will find it weird and strange. I found it amazing and representative of a society.
The Steven Udvar Hazy museum in Dulles VA is another excellent air and space museum. And now that the National Air & Soace museum is being renovated it’s better honestly.
Another great one is the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, WY. Lots of Buffalo Bill exhibits and the largest gun collection in the world. It’s easily a 2 day museum and unexpectedly great.
Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria. It hosts exhibitions about technology and humans and I was completely blown away.
Also they have a large 3D room where you get shown around our galaxy... That put me into an existential crisis for a few days.
Aside from all the world famous obvious answers the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto CA was unexpectedly good. Saw a boot from a space suit, Shaq’s giant sneaker, a golden sandals that belonged to a king and lots of other cool stuff.
I haven't been to any outside the US, and admittedly not that many in, with how many there are. So far The Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix has been one of the most interesting to me and I didn't see it all by far. There is a "petting zoo" downstairs with a selection of instruments you can play too! It was crazy satisfying to bang a big gong.
I'm enjoying this thread, I've been to many of the museums already mentioned and they're all great.
For me I think my current favourite is the Natural History Museum in New York which I went to a couple of months ago. It was enormous and every room had a few really special things. I learnt so much!
My all time favourite is just so difficult. I really enjoyed The House of Terror in Budapest, I really didn't know anything about the topic at all and I was thoroughly educated.
I'd also give a special mention to a museum in Rhodes that was full of sculptures they'd pulled from shipwrecks. The geography means there's a lot of shipwrecks nearby and those date from ancient Greece onwards. The oldest sculptures were well rounded by the water and it gave them a very weird ethereal look.
The natural history museum in nyc is amazing. I went when I was there in January and loved it.
I nearly didn't go because I've been to so many Natural History museums and I had a short time in New York, but then my friend reminded me that Ross from friends worked there and that tipped the scales.
It was so huge though, I got there at opening and there was genuinely a point where I realised I needed to speed up or I wouldn't finish it before closing time! That's without any of the special exhibitions too.
A tiny museum within sight of Prague Castle. Another tiny museum SOMA San Francisco. Both had amazing art/artists, were completely empty of people, and I have no clue where they are now or what artists I saw.
Natural History Museum in London... before you even get to the exhibits it has some of the most breathtaking architecture.
I find that I'm both drawn the the building as well as the exhibits when I'm there, all the pillars are trees with texture and foliage (and monkeys too), the large room with the minerals has sea creatures carved onto the stonework. The carved wood, the floor even the outside with the metal drain pipes and tiled roof...it's a Temple to Nature, really beautiful place!
My 6th grade class took a field trip from Biloxi MS to New Orleans to see the visiting Tutankamon exhibit in 1977. It was the first real museum I'd visited, plus we'd spent the semester studying Egyptian history.
We hat Tut-enk-Amon in Cologne when I was a kid. Definitely something I remember!
That's a once in a lifetime deal! Neat!
Vasa Museum in Stockholm
#1 The archeological museum in Krakow. https://ma.krakow.pl/en/main-page/
It's an old school museum, which tend to be my favorites, but there had been an art exhibition installed the week before so there were art installations displayed alongside the regular exhibits. The whole experience was wonderfully weird. It wasn't always 100% clear what was part of the regular exhibit and what was art, because some of the regular exhibits were pretty weird. Was there an entire elaborate exhibit (with light-up displays) about the hydrogeology of southern Poland? What was the very Soviet-bloc looking sewing machine doing in that one room? Adding to the fun, the docents were very very insistent upon the order in which you visited each room. I think that was completely normal for them, but it added to the weirdness. There was also a mirror that would sound an alarm if you approached too closely. Its purpose was unclear. When we went in we were not expecting some of the exhibits to be... off.
#2 The Museum of Jurassic Technology in LA. https://mjt.org/
Apparently now open by appointment only. It's weird by design, which is why it gets #2 rating.
#3 Any museum where you walk in and mentally say, "I've made a huge mistake." These tend to be small places where it's just you, your equally uncomfortable spouse, and the curator/owner. You're getting a special tour. I mean, you know in your heart that he's more interested in showing your his weird shit than murdering you, but the question of whether you'll feature in the next exhibit is always floating in the air. They may not have the nicest stuff to look at, but you remember the experience.
Any museum where you walk in and mentally say, "I've made a huge mistake."
I went to an art museum in the balearics once, the door was open, normal stuff, free entry sign, donation box, cloakroom, etc. So I'm walking round the first room and a guy runs in shouting "NO! NO!" and chases me right out of the museum. I definitely made a huge mistake there but I wish I knew what the mistake was!
Georgia Aquarium (Atlanta). Trixie and friends. #IYKYK #notPorn
Second best? Every museum we went to in Sweden was free. "Go on in, see some viking stuff."
Most disappointing? Phallus.is , pretty much nothing but what you think it is. Good for a lark and a titter but no revelations.
The Viking and Technical Museums in Stockholm are 100% worth a visit. I don't remember them being free though.
Also: Skansen.
I loved the penis museum! I was worried it would be uncomfortable for a group of friends but actually it was quite educational.
Georgia aquarium though, I could live there.
There was some Diamond exhibit at a museum in Michigan I went to as a kid which was fun! Had a lot of interactive things like a station where you could smell "odd" scents of some kind. There were descriptions I'm sure but I don't remember well. But was fun.
Edit: i also remember there being a giant pendulum that was known to have been swinging constantly for some number of years.
Goes without saying if you are in D.c. all the Smithsonians. But I also recomed the Spy museum. Very unique and new building is very cool.
I agree. Smithsonian is tops for me so far. Was so thrilled to see the Coelacanth and Ankylosaur!
I just got back from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, and that was almost as good, just a bit smaller. Got to touch a moon fragment, a Mars fragment, and a metallic meteor. Very nice, but much smaller, mineral room. Lots of great dinosaurs and especially pterosaurs. And as the main contributor on [email protected], they had over 20 owl specimens. Great place.
Spy Museum was a blast and worth paying for in a city of mostly free to notch museums. Way more content than I expected, and very interactive.
I second the Spy Museum as well as the Smithsonians.
The Newseum was also a great museum but it has been closed.
I haven't been to many museums, but the Corning museum of glass was interesting.
In the world? There are a ton of really good museums in the world. But it hasn't been mentioned yet so I am going to say the British Museum.
I really like the Concord in Sinsheim.
The seaplane museum in Tallinn, Estonia. Almost a perfect museum.
view more: next ›