Museum Monday

Museum Monday: hair, cockroaches, plumbing and more

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Thousands of museums in the United States document important events and valuable objects.

But if it’s the funny and offbeat you’re after, hightail it to the Plumbing Museum, the Pencil Sharpener Museum and these other offbeat and somewhat off-kilter places I profiled in a recent slide-show story titled Bizarre Museums for Bing Travel.

Here’s a sampling:

Established to celebrate “the labor of artists whose work would be displayed and appreciated in no other forum,” the three galleries operated by the Museum of Bad Art in the Boston area celebrate paintings that have “gone horribly awry in either concept or execution.” Rescued from trash heaps, yard sales, thrift stores and attics, the collection now includes more than 600 works of art, all of them bad — but in a good way.

Whether it’s a good hair day or a bad one, Leila Cohoon is happy to weave stories about the history of hair and take visitors through Leila’s Hair Museum in Independence, Mo. The carefully coiffed collection includes locks snipped from the manes of celebrities, 400 framed Victorian hair wreaths and more than 2,000 pieces of antique brooches, bracelets, necklaces and other jewelry made entirely with, or containing, human hair.

Located, appropriately enough, in Watertown, Mass., the Plumbing Museum’s collection snakes back to the 18th century and includes antique sinks, toilets, water closets and bathtubs as well as historic tools of the trade. If you’re curious about water mains, overflows and septic tanks, this museum devoted to piping technology through the ages will help flush out the answers.

When he’s not out removing unwanted critters from private homes, pest-control expert Michael Bohdan is tending to his Cockroach Hall of Fame and Museum in Plano, Texas. The museum features live insects, such as Madagascar hissing cockroaches, and more than two dozen costumed and preserved cockroaches, including the bejeweled, piano-playing Liberoachi and the sexy Marilyn Monroach.

Get the picture? There are 14 offbeat museums featured in the Bing Travel story, Bizarre Museums.
I’ll let you contemplate these a while and post a few more tomorrow.

Have I missed your favorite offbeat museum? Drop a note in the comment section below and perhaps your recommendation will be featured on a future edition of StuckatTheAirport.com’s Museum Monday.

Museum Monday: the history of high-heeled shoes

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When I leave the airport and have a day or two to spend in a city, I’m always armed with a list of special museum exhibitions and local offbeat collections open to the public.

That’s how I knew to leave a few hours free in Yakima, Washington recently to visit the Yakima Valley Museum, which has a display of 600 pairs of exquisite high-heeled shoes from the collection of David Childs, who told me that the museum-quality footwear from the 1800s to the present (much of it my size; but alas, securely behind alarmed glass) was just half of his collection.

“I don’t do flats, boots, practical shoes, matching handbags or sets,” said Childs, “This is a cultural history of the 20th century as told through pristine, displayable, high-heeled shoes.”

By that he means Art Deco shoes from the 1920 and 1930s, platform, ankle-strap shoes of the 1940’s, pointed stiletto heels from the 50s and other eras (“Wait around and the styles come back,” says Childs) and some unusual, experimental and one-of-a kind models from the 1950s and 60s.

Here’s a short video about the exhibit put together by the Yakima Herald Republic.

Museum Monday: Duck decoys at SFO Airport

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Duck decoys, a hunting tool designed to lure wild birds into the open, are the subject of the latest exhibition at San Francisco International Airport.

According to the SFO Museum:

From coast-to-coast, various regions of North America developed distinctive types of decoys. Bodies of water, hunting methods, and predominant species differed in each area. Materials, styles of carving, and painting techniques also varied locally. Salty, rough waters typically required sturdy, solid-bodied decoys that required frequent repainting. Freshwater decoys, on the other hand, allowed for hollow bodies and detailed paint patterns, which lasted through many seasons. Master craftsmen developed local styles that were emulated by and passed onto generations of carvers. Artisans also brought their own individual creativity to the birds they crafted, making each one unique.

Today, decoys are not only functional, many carved decoys are prized pieces of folk art.

More than 70 examples of work by the best decoy craftsmen are on display in The Allure of the Decoy,  located pre-security in the International Terminal Main Hall at San Francisco International Airport from April 29 through November 6, 2011.


Can’t make it to San Francisco International Airport before then? The SFO Museum has put a slide show featuring 24 of the decoys online.

(Photos courtesy SFO Museum)

 

Museum Monday: Style in the Aisle at Seattle Museum of Flight

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It’s Museum Monday here at StuckatTheAirport.com and this week we’re taking another look at some of the photos and outfits in the Style in the Aisle exhibit at Seattle’s Museum of Flight.

Airline Ephemera from the Archives of the Museum of Flight.

Three Stewardess near Jet Engine; possibly PanAm (from the Archives of the Museum of Flight; Copyright The Museum of Flight Collection.)

Style in the aisle galley

A United Airlines Stewardess with food service in the Galley, circa late 1940’s early 1950’s. Copyright The Museum of Flight Collection

Style in the Aisle

“Fashion designer, Oleg Cassini created a futuristic look for the flight attendants of Air West during the carrier’s brief existence prior to its purchase by Howard Hughes. The basic uniform consisted of a textured polyester dress and a jacket with an unconventional side-buttoning configuration. The pieces came in a selection of bright, solid colors inspired by the natural colors found at Air West’s destinations, including fern green, Pacific blue and canyon red.”  Copyright Delta Airlines.

Museum Monday: The Shining at Mass MoCA

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Flying Airstream trailers?  It looks like someone once thought that was a great way to get around.

Among the current installations at MASS MoCA, the giant Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, MA, is a three-part project by Michael Oatman titled All Utopias Fell.

MASS MoCa All Utopias Fell


The main part of the exhibit is an old Airstream trailer, complete with parachutes and solar panels, that looks as if it’s just crash-landed on the roof of the museum.

Titled The Shining, the Airstream trailer is open to visitors and, inside,  “the craft” appears to be part domestic space, part laboratory and part library.  Videos flicker on the cockpit’s instrumentation panels, books fill the shelves, postcards are tucked into shelving, and a 33 rpm record (The Doors, when I was there) plays over and over on a cheap record player.

MASS MoCA, Michael Oatman trailer

There’s more to this piece. Much more. According to the museum website:

Once inside the craft, visitors will also be able to view Codex Solis, a massive field of photovoltaic (PVs) or solar panels. …In addition to this 230-foot long grid, mirrors are interspersed in the middle of the field, and suggest an absent text. The arrangement of mirrors and solar panels is based on a specific quote by an unnamed author, and will not be revealed by the artist; instead the public will be encouraged to spend time with the piece, watch the reflected sky, and solve the riddle as birds and planes, inverted, fly by.

Sounds a bit complicated, but take my word. Like everything you see at MASS MoCA, it may take a while to figure out what you’re looking at, but it’s all very cool.

Museum Monday: 75 years at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport

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There are more than 700 aviation and space-related museums in this country. Each Monday we try to profile one of them.  Eventually we’ll visit them all.

This week, we’re stopping at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, which has an exhibit of photos, videos and historic memorabilia celebrating its 75th anniversary.

History exhibit at Phoenix Sky Harbor

According to airport history notes, the city of Phoenix purchased Sky Harbor Airport on July 16, 1935 for $100,000. That November, a dedication event took place that included speeches, an aerial circus performance and a dinner dance.

The original terminal building, hangar and tower were located on the north side of today’s airport property and at one time a chapel with a bell stood at the entrance of the airport.

Sky Harbor wedding chapel

Arizona didn’t require a three-day waiting period for couples wanting to get married, so the airport hoped to generate business by having an on-site wedding chapel for couples wanting to tie the knot as soon as possible.

Interested in learning more about the history of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport?

75 Years of Nonstop Service will be on exhibit until March 13, 2011 in the pre-security area of Terminal 3.  You can also go online, to Sky Harbor’s History section to watch video clips and read excerpts from research done for the airport’s 50th anniversary.

Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport pilot log

Museum Monday: Liverpool John Lennon Airport

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On Saturday, October 9th, fans around the world will mark what would have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday.

One place they remember Lennon year-round is at the Liverpool John Lennon Airport:

Outside the airport, they’ve got this Yellow Submarine:

Inside the airport, there’s a statue of John Lennon

Johh Lennon Statue liverpool Airport

Song lyrics written by John Lennon

And even some of this suits:

Museum Monday: Oregon’s Tillamook Air Museum

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There are more than 700 air and space-related museums in this country.

Each Monday, we highlight one of them.  Eventually we’ll hit them all.

This week: The Tillamook Air Museum in Tillamook, Oregon.

Tillamook Air Museum

The museum has about three dozen aircraft in its collection, but I’ve chosen to highlight it this week because of history of the building that houses the museum.

During WWII, the U.S. Navy stationed a fleet of blimps along the east and west coasts.  Each airship was 252 feet long and filled with 425,000 cu. feet of helium.

These “K-class” blimps had a range of 2,000 miles and could stay in the air for three days at a time, so they were ideally suited for anti-submarine patrol and for escorting ship convoys out to sea.  The blimps also trailed targets for fighter-plane practice.

To store off-duty dirigibles, the Navy built 17 seven-acre blimp hangars.

They used the exact same blueprint for each building, and each clear-span wooden structure was 15-stories high, more than 1,000 feet long, and built with fire-retardant lumber.

Tillamook’s dairy land was chosen as the site for two of those hangers in part because the countryside offered mild weather and the largest flat area on the Oregon and Washington coast.

Tillamook Blimps in hangar

Unfortunately, Tillamook’s Hangar A burned down in 1992. (It turned out that the chemicals that make wood fire-retardant eventually leech out.) But Hangar B is still around and now shares the title of World’s Largest Clear-Span Wooden Building with the six other still-intact blimp hangars around the country.

Hangar B is now also home to the Tillamook Air Museum, which houses a flight simulator, a collection of more than 30 WW II “War Birds,” and historical films and displays about the construction of the building and the blimps that were once based here.

Blimp Hangar  Bio

Length: 1,072 feet
Height: 192 feet (over 15 stories)
Width: 296 feet
Area: Over 7 acres (enough to play six football games)
Doors: 120 ft. high, 6 sections each weighing 30 tons. 220 ft. wide opening. The sections roll on railroad tracks
Catwalks: 2 catwalks, each 137 ft. above the hangar deck

Do you have have a favorite aviation or space museum? If so, let us know where it is and why you like it. Your museum pick may be featured on a future edition of Museum Monday here at StuckatTheAirport.com.

Museum Monday: Discover the Airport! Exhibit at Syracuse Airport

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There are more than 700 aviation and space-related museums in this country.

Each Monday we visit one of them.  Eventually we’ll hit them all.

This week’s pick: the Discover the Airport! Exhibit at New York’s Syracuse Hancock International Airport.

The exhibit is located right there in the main lobby of the airport terminal and includes the cockpit of a Boeing 727, landing gear, a baggage tug, a mock air control tower and a “marshaller” display that lets you learn about – and practice – signaling techniques needed to help aircraft take-off and land safely.

Sounds like fun!

Know of another great aviation or space museum? Let us know and it may be featured on a future edition of Museum Monday here at StuckatTheAirport.com.

Syracuse Hancock Airport luggage tug

Museum Monday: aerospace museum finds

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With the help of Twitter-buddy Isaac Alexander, I spent a good chunk of this Labor Day weekend putting together a list of aerospace museums to keep track of and, perhaps, to feature on Museum Mondays here at StuckatTheAirport.com.

The process took quite a bit longer than it might have because I kept clicking on links at these museum websites and, well, you know how that goes… a half hour later I’d get back to the task at hand.

So for Museum Monday this week, I’ll just share a few of the links that caught my eye.

First up: The Stafford Museum, in Weatherford, Oklahoma.

Named in honor of four-time astronaut Thomas P. Stafford, a post on this museum’s site sent me to a Gizmodo posting of a half-dozen awe-inspiring time lapse videos from space.

Here’s one:

And I can’t even remember now which museum site sent me to this video about jobs in aviation – circa 1947 – but I had to stop and watch the entire thing.

Have you visited a great aviation or space-related museum lately? Share your favorite here and it may be featured on a future edition of Museum Monday.