Ask Lemmy

The tech museum in San Jose. I fucking love that place.

I would say Teylers Museum in Haarlem, the Netherlands:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teylers_Museum

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.