Museum Monday

Museum Monday: Lightner Museum Turns 75

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If we’re not in an airport, you’ll find the Stuck at the Airport team in a museum.

And if it’s a museum with some unusual collections, all the better.

The Lightner Museum in St. Augustine, Florida fits the bill.

And how.

First built as the Hotel Alcazar in 1888, the building opened as the Lightner Museum of Hobbies in January 1948.

The museum was created by Otto Lightner, a great advocate of collecting and the publisher of Hobbies magazine.

Lightner promoted every kind of hobby, from collecting matchbooks and cigar labels to whittling wood. But he was also a great collector himself and had the means to amass a substantial personal collection of fine and decorative art, natural history specimens, Americana, and just plain stuff. 

Cigar Lables

Lightner first opened a museum of hobbies in Chicago in 1934. And in addition to his eclectic and eccentric collections, he encour­aged the readers of Hobbies magazine to send him their collec­tions. 

They did.

Following a stay in St. Augustine’s in 1946, Lightner purchased the Hotel Alcazar to serve as the permanent home for his collections.

The collections include lamps by Louis Comfort Tiffany, shells, geological specimens, a vast number of salt & pepper shakers, Victurian mechanical insturments, and hundreds of thousands of buttons.

We know there also some shrunken heads in the collection.

And in celebration of the museum’s 75th diamond anniversary in 2023, the museum is hosting a special exhibition titled, 75 for 75.

On display is a selection of artwork and objects from the museum’s permanent collection. The exhibit opens on February 2nd and we’re making plans to visit soon.

From the Lightner Museum Collection

Ride On!

We love anything transportation. So the Lightner Museum’s new exhibit “Ride On!: Historic Bicycles from the Keith Pariani Collection,” is also of great interest.

Here are some of the exhibit notes on the early popularity of the bicycles and the Hotel Alacazar’s ‘bicycle academy:’

In the 1890s the bicycle took over the hearts and minds of Americans. By the early twentieth century, almost 300 bicycle manufacturing firms were established in the US. Swept up in the craze for cycling, the Lightner Museum’s historic building, the Hotel Alcazar, offered its own bicycle academy, allowing its guests to tour Gilded Age St. Augustine on two wheels. 

First developed in Europe in the early nineteenth century, the bicycle took decades of design and engineering to make it safe and convenient for the average rider.  The first popular models of the bicycle were high-wheeled and dangerous for unskilled riders because of the frequency of falls. However, with the invention of the “Safety” bicycle, the vehicle became a safer and more popular mode of transportation. The women’s safety bicycle, allowing for women’s dress, helped boost the bicycle’s popularity even more. By the 1890s, the safety bicycle was widely used in the U.S. by everyone, regardless of age or gender, for both transportation and recreation.

The “Ride On!” exhibit runs February 2 through September 30, 2023.

Bicycle Academy

Museum Monday: All things Edgar Allan Poe

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The Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia will be celebrating its 100th-anniversary April 28 through October 31, 2022, with an exhibit highlighting dozens of recently acquired Poe artifacts.

The list of artifacts includes Edgar Allen Poe’s pocket watch, which he owned while writing The Tell-Tale Heart, a horror story that, repeatedly mentions a watch.

“That means this might just be the very watch Poe was envisioning when he described the old man’s heartbeat as ‘a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton.’,” says Poe Museum curator Chris Semtner.

“The Tell-Tale Heart’ is a classic story we have read in school, heard at Halloween, and even seen recreated on The Simpsons, and having the watch is like holding a real-life piece of that story.”

The gold watch is engraved with “Edgar A. Poe.” And in 1842, Poe gave the watch to one of his creditors to pay off a debt.

Other new-to-the-museum Poe artifacts include his engagement ring, the earliest surviving copy of the last photo ever taken of Poe, and a piece of the coffin in which he was buried for the first 26 years after his death.

Exhibit notes declare the ring “sad evidence of the tragic love story of Poe and his first and last fiancée, Elmira Royster Shelton.”

The couple was engaged as teenagers, but Shelton’s dad broke it off. Poe and Shelton got engaged again, in the last months of Poe’s life. He gave her this ring with the name “Edgar” engraved on it. But Poe died just ten days before their wedding day.

The coffin fragment comes from the original coffin in which Poe was buried on October 8, 1849. In 1875, Poe’s body was moved across the cemetery from his unmarked grave to a better location where a large monument could be placed over his grave.

When the coffin was lifted from the ground, this piece fell off and was later owned by a
president of the Maryland Historical Society,

“Poe wrote so many stories about being buried alive that it seems only fitting that
we have a piece of the very coffin in which he was buried,” says museum curator Semtner.

Fragment of Poe coffin

The Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond features permanent exhibits of Poe’s manuscripts, personal items, clothing, and even a lock of the author’s hair. The exhibit of newly-acquired artifacts opens with an Unhappy Hour on April 28.

Opened in 1922, the Poe Museum is comprised of four buildings surrounding an Enchanted Garden constructed from the building materials salvaged from Poe’s homes and offices.

Museum Monday: Scientific Instruments at SFO

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SFO Museum : Equinoctial inclining sundial  c. 1865

SFO Museum exhibits rare 19th to early 20th-century scientific instruments

SFO Museum: Double-scope theodolite  c. 1890–1910

The newest exhibition from the SFO Museum at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) is filled with rare mid-nineteenth century to early twentieth-century scientific instruments.

At a glance, they are clearly works of mechanical know-how and art. But these objects also tell a story about the emergence of modern science and the specialized instruments scientists built and used to explore the world.

From the exhibition release:

When modern science emerged in the seventeenth century, scientists invented specialized instruments to explore the world and universe in a closer, more logical manner. These intriguing devices facilitated the careful study of almost all facets of life through the research and demonstration of ideas and theories. During the nineteenth century, new technologies allowed for the precision manufacturing of scientific instruments. An array of instruments assisted some of the most brilliant minds on Earth as scientists made early discoveries in the fields of electrodynamics and atomic theory.

This exhibition in the Harvey Milk Terminal 1 of the San Francisco International Airport displays a selection of antique scientific instruments and explores their uses. Dates: September 11, 2021, to April 3, 2022.  The exhibit is accessible to ticketed passengers but non-ticketed guests may get access by emailing curator@flysfo.com.

SFO Museum: Geissler tube rotator [with modern tube]  late 19th century
SFO Museum: Helmholtz resonators  c. 1890

Museum Monday: Where to see the Aerocar

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We enter the new week still grounded by COVID-19, but dreaming of places we might soon be able to go.

And the fun ways we might get there.

In the meantime, we put together a round-up of some aviation museum highlights to visit, virtually, for The Points Guy blog.

On the list, we were pleased to be able to include one of our all-time favorite aviation artifacts: the Aerocar, which is part of the collection at Seattle’s Museum of Flight.

The museum recently posted a fun video of the museum curator describing the Taylor Aerocar III, which is one version of the flying car that Moulton Taylor built – and flew – in the 1950s.

Take a look at this 1949 news reel that shows the Aerocar taking flight.

Museum Monday – Cars, Guitars, Espresso & the Moon Landing 

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Today’s post on StuckatTheAirport.com is made possible by Deem – your most powerful solution for booking and managing corporation travel online.

Courtesy SFO Museum

Here at StuckatTheAirport.com we’re big fans of the Philadelphia International Airport, Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, San Francisco International Airport and the many other airports which have robust exhibition programs or their very own museums.

Of course, we’re big fans of museum exhibitions outside of airports too.

Three we’ve spotted that may be worth planning trips, or side-trips, around, are at America’s Car Museum (ACM) in Tacoma, WA, the Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA) and the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

 See the USA in your Chevrolet

1960 Chevrolet Corvette – Courtesy ACM

In Tacoma, WA, America’s Car Museum (ACM) is celebrating summer driving with a display of classic Chevrolet cars in the Route 66 exhibit showcasing vehicles that traveled the Mother Road during the golden age of American motoring.

The “See the USA in Your Chevrolet” display runs through October 14, 2019 and includes a 1960 Chevrolet Corvette Convertible and almost a dozen other great examples of early Chevys ranging from a 1919 Chevrolet FB Baby Grand Touring Sedan to a 1972 Chevrolet El Camino Pickup.

Espresso and Iconic Guitars


MIRAGE TRIPLETTE, KEES VAN DER WESTEN, 2001

Through June 15, the Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA) is hosting Passione Italiana, a perky exhibition chronicling the evolution of the espresso machine.

On view are Italian espresso makers, inventive coffee sets and unique crockery from the mid-twentieth century to today.

From June 29 to September 29, MODA’s featured exhibition will focus on guitar design and construction, with a great line-up of guitars played by performers such as Bo Diddley, Jack White, St. Vincent and others.

Visitors will first see guitars in their most minimal form and be asked to consider how simple and traditional design elements such as the shape of an instrument and the species of wood affect the sound.

The exhibition will then take visitors through advancements in the craft of making string instruments (luthiery) and share stories of how some of the 20th century’s most famous guitars came to their honored status.

Guitars scheduled to be on view include:

Junior Brown’s Custom Guit-Steel, Bo Diddley’s Gretsch 6138, Jack White’s Diddley Bow (from It Might Get Loud), Buck Owens’ Harmony Acoustic, Rich Robinson’s Scala Telecaster, Derek Trucks’ Gibson SG and St. Vincent’s Signature Ernie Ball Music Man

Wire & Wood: Designing Iconic Guitars will be on view at the Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA) beginning June 29.

Out of this world: Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing

Lunar spacesuit worn by Neil Armstrong on Apollo 11 mission showing the reflection in the face shield (NASM photo by Jim Preston)

While we’re talking about museum exhibits worth planning a trip around, keep in mind that in July the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing with a five-day celebration at the museum and on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

The celebration will stretch from July 16 – exactly 50 years from the launch of Apollo 11 – to July 20, the day Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took the first steps on the moon.

A wide range of educational and commemorative activities are on the schedule, but perhaps most noteworthy is the fact that Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 spacesuit will go on display July 16 for the first time in 13 years.  Look for it near the 1903 Wright Flyer.

Museum Monday: Cars, Guitars, Espresso and the Moon Landing is made possible by Deem – your most powerful solution for booking and managing corporation travel online.

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