Indy’s Teeny Statue of Liberty Museum, on East Tenth Street in Indianapolis, IND, is home to Tim Harmon’s collection of about 1000 items portraying or bearing the image of the Statue of Liberty.
The museum is about 10 feet by 16 feet (hence, “teeny”, says Harmon) and resides in the front room of a building created by enclosing an alley.
Harmon says his collection started innocently with a handful of Statues of Liberties arranged on the back of his toilet tank. “Then there was no reason to stop,” he said. “And when you collect you get a shelf, then you get a couple of shelves, then people start giving you things. And in my case, it was Statues of Liberties.”
And then it was Indy’s Teeny Statue of Liberty Museum.
“The museum’s not patriotic,” says Harmon. “The museum just is what it is. It’s a museum filled with Statues of Liberty.”
Here are some snaps from our tour of Indy’s Teeny Statue of Liberty Museum.
Statue of Liberty tape measureStatue of Liberty door knobTeeny Lego Statue of Liberty
The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis dates back to 1925 and now, with more than 130,00 artifacts and more than 4,00 programs, is the world’s largest children’s museum.
Highlights include the Dinsophere, the historic carousel, a 55-ton steam engine, cultural exhibits, a 43-foot tall tower of Chihuly glass, an international space station exhibit, and a plethora of sports-themed, interactive outdoor exhibits.
If you visit, be sure to set a good part of your day, because it’s the kind of attraction that offers something surprising and engaging at every turn for both kids and adults.
Behind The Scenes At The Children’s Museum
Like most museums, The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis can only display a very small part of its collection. And with such a large collection, that means that a lot of really great stuff is kept in storage.
Lucky for us, Chris Carron, the museum’s Director of Collections, offers occasional behind-the-scenes tours of the treasures.
Here are just a few of our favorites.
The Children’s Museum has the world’s largest collection of Mr. Potato Head memorabilia
Inside this matchbox is a diorama of a village populated with dress fleas. It is one of the smallest objects in the collection.
This Steiff bear was once used as a store display. It’s big, but the museum’s dinosaurs are far bigger.
Atchison is also home to the Amelia Earhart Earthwork, a one-acre portrait created by Kansas artist Stan Herd in 1997 using plants, stone, and other materials.
And it now sits adjacent to the Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum which will have its grand opening on April 14, 2023.
The museum centerpiece is the world’s last remaining Lockheed Electra 10-E airplane.
And this plane is named Muriel, in honor of Amelia Earhart’s younger sister, Grace Muriel.
The fully restored Lockheed Electra is identical to the plane Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan were flying in 1937 when they disappeared during their ill-fated attempt to fly around the world.
Surrounding the plane are 14 interactive STEM-inspired exhibit areas and activity stations. Visit them all and you’ll learn about Amelia Earhart of, course, but also some history, culture, science, technology, aviation, engineering, mathematics, and more.
Museum visitors can scroll through digitized images of Earhart’s mechanic logbooks, compare the inner working of airplane engines then and now, learn about celestial navigation, practice packing the plane, and squeeze into the full-scale replica of Muriel’s cockpit.
After listening to recordings of radio interviews with the real Amelia Earhart and watching an uncanny computer-generated Amelia Earhart video, museum visitors can try ‘being’ Amelia Earhart.
Museum admission includes a chance to fly Earhart’s red Lockheed Vega 5B in a virtual reality simulator. And the flight programmed includes the same route and challenges (bad weather, mechanical problems, etc.) Earhart faced during her 15-hour flight on May 20-21, 1932 when became the first woman to fly nonstop and alone across the Atlantic.
The Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum in Atchison, Kansas will have its grand opening on Friday, April 14.
Earlier this month, celebrity skateboarders and skateboard crews from across the country rolled into the old terminal facilities – and even onto the tarmac – at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. They were there for Red Bull’s second Terminal Takeover.
Here is a short video of pro skateboarder Jake Wooten showing off his skills – and the airport terminal transformation – from last year’s event. And below, a link to a story we prepared for The Points Guy site.
— New Orleans Airport (@flyneworleans) May 2, 2022
Celebrate Museum Month – at the airport
Many airports around the country have official museums and museum programs. Stuck at the Airport will highlight as many as we can. But Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport gave us a head start.
May is #MuseumMonth and we’re celebrating our very own Phoenix Airport Museum! 🎨
— Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (@PHXSkyHarbor) May 2, 2022
Recognize any of these stuffed animals?
Since March, we've had quite a few stuffed animals turn up in our airport lost and found! These have been left behind at the book store, the parking structure, and the children's play areas. Recognize any of them? Let us know! We love making reunions happen. pic.twitter.com/or4snPIRb5
— MKE – Milwaukee Airport (@MitchellAirport) May 2, 2022
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 Museumin 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.
