Museums

Museum Monday: The Pencil Sharpener Museum

The Pencil Sharpener Museum in Logan, Ohio is open again, and the 5,000 sharpeners in the collection are now housed in a new building at the Hocking Hills Regional Welcome Center.

This is the world’s only Pencil Sharpener Museum and it includes 4000 pencil sharpeners collected by the late Rev. Paul Johnson, plus a new addition of 1000 pencil sharpeners donated by the family of antiques collector Frank Parades, who discovered pencil sharpeners dating back to the 1800s.

Here are some of our favorite images of pencil sharpers from the collection, but we’re sure sharp-eyed visitors will discover their own.

New SFO Museum exhibit features Chinese ceramics

If you’re heading to or through San Francisco International Airport (SFO) anytime soon, be sure to look for some of the permanent and temporary exhibits offered throughout the terminals by the SFO Museum.

One of the newest, titled Everyday Elegance in Chinese Ceramics, features an assortment of functional wares from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries representing various regions in China.

The exhibit includes oil lamps in the shape of animals, colorful hat stands, lively guardian lions or “foo dogs,” blue-and-white porcelain, rustic food storage jars, and more.

According to the exhibition notes:

Everyday objects are frequently embellished with a host of auspicious symbols to increase the likelihood of wish fulfillment. Rebuses or pictorial puns found on ceramics convey a variety of desires, from a harmonious marriage to the securing of rank, wealth, and longevity. Decorative motifs often take the form of flowers, birds, animals, children, or geometric designs. 

Looke for Everyday Elegance in Chinese Ceramics, in the pre-security area of the International Departures Hall (Gallery 4D) at San Francisco International Airport through mid-August.

All images courtesy of SFO Museum

Snaps from the National Neon Sign Museum

On a recent road trip through Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge, the Stuck at the Airport museum reporter came upon the National Neon Sign Museum in the charming town of The Dalles, Oregon.

Unfortunately, the museum was closed the day were were in town. Fortunately, museum director David Benko answered the phone when we called and agreed to open the museum for a special tour.

Benko is a longtime neon sign collector, a neon expert, and a skilled neon sign designer who has amassed more than 300 neon signs as well as a vast collection of artifacts related to the invention of neon and its evolution as an advertising tool.

He’s turned the Elks Temple in The Dalles into a neon sign shrine, with a movie theater for showing films about neon; an exhibit devoted to Georges Claude, the French engineer who invented neon tubing; rooms filled with brightly lit neon advertising signs; and an event space designed to look like a small town Main Street in the era when every shop had a neon sign.

This one’s a winner and a great reason to plan a trip to The Dalles, Oregon.

Museum Monday at LAX and SFO airports

Say “Hi, Barbie!” at Flight Path Museum at LAX

A visit to the Flight Path Museum and Learning Center at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is an avgeek delight anytime.

Located on LAX property, a short drive or taxi ride from the terminals, the museum includes one of the largest airline uniform collections, as well as space exploration memorabilia, a great research library, and a wide range of commercial aviation artifacts.

Right now is an especially good time to visit because the museum has Barbiemania. In honor of the new Barbie movie, the museum is showing an exhibit of aviation-themed Barbies and Barbie accessories, including Barbie dolls inspired by famous aviators, including Bessie Coleman and Amelia Earhart.

Unconventional enamels at SFO Airport

The SFO Museum at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) oversees twenty-five sites throughout the airport terminals. So if you’ve got a long walk to your gate or a long layover at SFO, it’s a good bet something will catch your eye.

One of the newest exhibitions at SFO features the unconventional enameled art of June Schwarcz (1918–2015) on view in the Harvey Milk Terminal 1, Departures Level 2, Galley 1 E now through early May 2024.

Here’s an intro to Schwarcz’s work from the SFO Museum;

Inspired by nature and fashion, as well as abstract, African, and Asian art, Schwarcz developed unique metalworking techniques, always experimenting and embracing complex technical challenges. She initially worked with copper panels and spun-copper bowls, infusing them with her own interpretation of traditional enameling. During the 1960s, Schwarcz pioneered electroforming, an innovative method that involved electroplating pieces made from thin copper foil. Schwarcz focused on sculptural vessels and when asked about her abstract forms, she explained, “They simply don’t hold water.” 

(Images of June Schwarcz’s artwork courtesy of SFO Museum and the collection of Forrest L. Merrill)

Museum Monday: Posters for Boeing’s canceled supersonic transport (SST) aircraft

They are easy to miss as you cross the pedestrian bridge connecting the main campus of Seattle’s sprawling Museum of Flight to the museum’s Space Gallery and Aviation Pavilion across the street.

But as part of the delightful Art+Flight exhibit currently underway at Seattle’s Museum of Flight, there is a display of charming motivational posters created for the Boeing Model 2707, a supersonic transport (SST) aircraft developed in the 1960s to compete with the British and French Concorde.

Boeing had a government contract to develop and build the supersonic airliner, but the contract was canceled in 1971 before the prototypes were even completed.

These posters are from the archives of the Museum of Flight, which says all it really knows about them is that they were made as motivational posters for employees working on the 2707 SST program during the 1960s. The colors and imagery clearly take influences from the pop art of the time. And the messages and slogans are all about making the plane as light as can be.


Images are courtesy of Seattle Museum of Flight’s Holden Withington Boeing SST Poster Collection and the Clarence S Howell Collection of Boeing SST Posters