Since 1995, Baltimore, Md. has been the home of the American Visionary Art Museum, a magical place that displays a vast amount of unusual and offbeat work by outsider artists, such as these carved Styrofoam cups made by Mark Swidler.

Now there are even more reasons to hightail it to Baltimore. This weekend the city welcomes its newest attraction: The National Pinball Museum.

Here’s the story I put together about the museum for msnbc.com Travel:

David Silverman, founder of the National Pinball Museum opening Saturday, Jan. 14, in Baltimore, Md., first discovered the coin-operated, arcade-game known as pinball when he was 4 years old.

“Back then, New York was one of the cities that banned pinball,” Silverman, 63, told msnbc.com. “Lawmakers considered it gambling and they thought it was associated with the mafia. So I first saw a pinball machine while on a vacation with my parents in upstate New York.”

Silverman grew up to be an avid pinball player and, eventually, a pinball machine collector. “My first machine was ‘Fireball,’ which was made by Bally, a major pinball company. My wife liked the game, so we kept it lit up in the living room. One game led to another and now I have more than 900 machines.”

While searching for parts and people to repair and maintain the machines in his collection, Silverman learned the history of pinball and discovered that it had roots reaching back to the 18th century.

“The early games were handmade and were played liked billiards with a cue stick,” said Silverman. “Then the coil spring came along and the cue stick was replaced by the plunger. Flippers didn’t come along until 1947, but that changed pinball from a game of chance to a game of skill.”

Like the metal balls in the pinball machines, the National Pinball Museum has been bounced around. Until it lost its lease in September 2011, the museum was located in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood. It’s new location, in Baltimore’s attraction-rich Inner Harbor, is smaller (two floors instead of four) but still offers a history gallery with original artwork and more than 40 vintage machines and an interactive gallery with more than 50 working machines, including some classic film and TV-themed machines dating back the 1940s and 50s, that may be played.

If you go:

The National Pinball Museum is located at 608 Water St. in Baltimore, Md., and will be open Friday-Sunday beginning Jan. 14. Admission tickets include play time on the machines in the museum’s Pinhead Gallery.

Categories: Art, Exhibits
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Juan Valdez – “the man with the mule” many of us recognize from TV commercials, will be at Miami International Airport Friday morning for a free coffee tasting and photo op event at the Juan Valdez Cafe at D-24 in the North Terminal.

The cafe opened in late December 2011 and is the fifth Juan Valdez at a U.S. airport. (JFK and Newark airports each have two Juan Valdez cafes.)

While I’m sure the Juan Valdez coffee is delicious, if it’s coffee you’re after at MIA, you should really try the traditional Cuban coffee served at Cafe Versailles (five locations), the Cafe La Carreta (Terminal E, 1st level) and the La Carreta Restaurant (Terminal D, Gate D3).

While you’re there, be sure to spend a few moments in the art gallery located just beyond the security checkpoint at Central Terminal E. An exhibit titled Sewn Dreams features the work of fiber artist Dina Knapp, whose client list has included artist, dancers and celebrities such as Cher, Bob Marley, Joanne Woodward and Phyllis Diller.

Bob Marley - from the Sewn Dreams exhibit at Miami International Airport

Categories: Art, Exhibits, Food
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What sort of souvenir do you search for in gift shops when you’re stuck at the airport or touring a town?

Some people pick up postcards, shot glasses or magnets.

Not David Weingarten.

On a two-week trip through Europe in the late 1970s, Weingarten received a miniature version of Germany’s Speyer Cathedral as a present from his uncle and tour guide, the noted architect Charles Moore, who also bought a souvenir-sized copy of the building for himself.

The small gift left a big impression. Weingarten, now of Ace Architects in Oakland, Calif., began collecting souvenir buildings in earnest. Today, with his partner, Margaret Majua, Weingarten owns the largest collection of three-dimensional architectural replicas of structures from around the world.

For a feature on msnbc.com’s Overhead Bin, I chatted with Weingarten about his collection.

Q: In addition to that original tiny cathedral, what types of structures are represented in your collection?

A: That cathedral has been joined by replicas of 5,000 other buildings, monuments and human-made places of all sorts and every description — famous and deeply obscure, special and mundane — from around the world. The collection is the most extensive of its type and includes some souvenir buildings made very recently and others made in the early 19th century, which are now 200 years old.

Q: 5,000 souvenir buildings! Where do you keep them all?

A: We used to keep all the little buildings in a small building outside our home. But several years ago, despite some aggressive editing, the collection threatened to spill out of the small building containing them. We made a bigger place for the little buildings.

Q: How do you organize the collection?

A: By place and type. Many of the world’s great cities possess a shelf or two or, in the case of New York, a cabinet. There are sections for the continents, for nations, for world’s fairs and expositions and for a range of arcana, such as American souvenir buildings made in Japan. There are also sections of little buildings turned out as salt and pepper shakers, lamps, coin banks, bookends, smoking accessories, lipstick holders and calendars. You get the idea.

Q: What is the attraction of souvenir buildings for you and for the rest of us who buy and bring them home from our travels?

A: Like some of their full-size counterparts, souvenir buildings work on our memories, very often in unanticipated ways. Miniatures of the Empire State, Chrysler, or Woolworth buildings or the Statue of Liberty make us think of these Gotham monuments; yet, also, more than this. We may remember our last visit, our companions on that trip, people and places seen, a subway ride or maybe a walk through Central Park. Memories prodded by architecture are seldom strictly architectural.

Q: Do you have a favorite souvenir building among the collection?

A: My most-esteemed miniature is a large, late 19th century, sterling silver model of the Bank of England in London. The full-sized building was designed, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, by the highly eccentric architect John Soane. Interestingly, the model shows the bank as Soane designed it, before some very disfiguring 20th century alterations. That illustrates another appealing quality of souvenir buildings: these slight tourists’ trifles very often outlast the substantial buildings and monuments they represent. This is especially the case with world’s fair souvenirs, which are miniatures of buildings designed with the intention that they would soon be demolished.

Q: And what happened to Charles Moore’s souvenir-sized copy of the Speyer Cathedral?

A: After Uncle Chuck died, in 1993, his house/studio in Austin, including his large collection of architectural models, folk art, books, etc., was transferred to the Charles Moore Foundation. I made off with his cast metal miniature of the cathedral and today, both [souvenirs from that 1970s trip] occupy the same glass shelf in the collection here.

Learn more about the world’s largest collection of souvenir buildings here.

All photos courtesy David Weingarten.

Categories: Exhibits, Museums, Uncategorized
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Marian Anderson by John W. Mosley

The Philadelphia International Airport has a fine new exhibit up featuring work by Philadelphia photographer John W. Mosley (1907-1969), a self-taught photojournalist who specialized in documenting African-American culture in the city.

According to the exhibit notes, Mosely was a prolific photographer who was known to photograph up to four events every day and whose work was published in numerous African-American newspapers, including the renowned Philadelphia Tribune.

Joe Frazier by John W. Mosley

Today, John W. Mosley’s photographs and negatives, estimated to number about 300,000, are preserved in the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection of Temple University Libraries. In 1984, the collection was donated by historian, author, and bibliophile, Charles L. Blockson, who amassed one of the nation’s largest private collections of manuscripts, rare books, sheet music, letters, prints, drawings and objects related to the history and culture of people of African descent.

John W. Mosley: Photographs of Philadelphia’s African-American Community, 1930s-1960s, From the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia” is located between Terminals E and F at Philadelphia International Airport and is open to the public through May 2012.

John Mosely, Self-portrait

Categories: Art, Exhibits
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Hans Christian Andersen was not only the author of well-known fairy tales as Thumbelina, The Emperor’s New Clothes and the Flying Trunk, the Danish author and poet was a dedicated traveler.

All of Andersen’s journeys to other countries began in Copenhagen, so it’s appropriate that the big leather trunk Andersen used to bring along on his journeys is on display in the baggage claim at Copenhagen International Airport.

Photo courtesy Copenhagen International Airport

Categories: Baggage, Exhibits
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