John M. Mossman (1846-1912) was a bank vault engineer who operated out of New York City in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His customers included the Stock Exchange and Bank of America, and he often found himself replacing older locks with new, upgraded versions. He kept hold of the locks that he replaced, which formed the basis for his 370-item lock collection. As a result, the collection…
On the second floor of 141 Wooster Street in New York's SoHo district there is a 3,600 square foot room filled with earth - 280,000 pounds of it, first installed in 1977 and maintained there ever since. This is the New York Earth Room, a piece of installation art by Walter De Maria, originally planned as a three month exhibition which has now stretched into its sixth decade. This is actually the…
Opened by David Hildebrand Wilson and Diana Drake Wilson in Culver City, Los Angeles in 1988, the Museum of Jurassic Technology somewhat defies explanation. It looks like a museum at the surface level, but the veracity of many of the exhibits is difficult to determine. Part of the challenge of exploring the museum is determining what's true and what's a fabrication, especially given the strict ban…
The Musical Museum in Brentford, London was founded by Frank Holland in 1963, initially as the British Piano Museum. Frank was fascinated by self-playing instruments - player pianos, self-playing violins, and orchestrions which combine multiple instruments in the same cabinet. Barrel operated orchestrions were popular from ~1860 to ~1900, and piano orchestrions from ~1900 to ~1930. The museum has…
Coutellerie Nontronnaise manufactures the Nontron knife , one of the oldest knife brands in France. The Nontron knife-making tradition started with Guillaume Legrand in 1654, followed by his son and grandson, both named Jean Legrand. The current company was established in 1928. Today the business is a combination museum and workshop. Visitors can explore the exhibits and purchase knives upstairs,…
Opened in 2025 as an extension of London's Victoria and Albert museum, the East Storehouse serves dual purposes as both a storage and restoration facility and a space that is open to the public and free to visit. It's home to over 250,000 items, thousands of which can be seen from the public walkways. Entrance to the climate-controlled warehouse is via an airlock-style corridor, after which you…
Vincent Simonetti collected his first historic tuba - a ~1910 Cerveny BB-flat Helicon - in Boston in 1965, while playing tuba on tour with the Moyseev Ballet Company. Today the collection has grown to more than 350 tubas, and is now the largest private collection in the world that is dedicated exclusively to members of the tuba family. The collection entirely fills five rooms of a bright yellow…
The Pioneer Memorial Museum makes the bold claim to host "the world's largest collection of artifacts on one subject" - that subject being stuff that pioneers brought with them to Utah! It's certainly a very impressive collection: many thousands of artifacts spread across six separate floors, covering all manner of items from roughly the 1840s to the 1870s. There's an absolute cornucopia of things…
In a postapocalyptic world where rogue AI has destroyed most of humanity, this museum exists as a memorial and apology to the humans who remain. Curator Audrey Kim has brought together interactive art and exhibits that explore themes of Artificial Intelligence and its impact on humanity. The temporary exhibition will run until 1st of May 2023, but Audrey hopes to continue it in a more permanent…
Mattie Leeds is a ceramic artist who has worked out of the same studio in the Santa Cruz mountains for more than 40 years. Over that time he has built up an astonishing sculpture garden displaying his work - hundreds of pots, many more than five feet tall, showcasing a delightful range of artistic styles and techniques. Mattie's garden also features the Great Wall of Chop Suey - an elaborate wall…
This warehouse in the Miller/Knox Regional Shoreline park in Richmond, CA has been home to the Golden State Model Railroad Museum since 1985. The museum is run by the East Bay Model Engineers Society, one of the world’s oldest model railway groups, who split from the Golden Gate Model Engineers Guild in 1933. The museum features 10,000 square feet of railway layouts, separated into three areas - O…
Tucked away in the tiny town of Buellton, California is this absolute treat of a museum. Jack Mendenhall sold his service station in 1978 and took to the road as a traveling salesman. He began collecting memorabilia relating to the auto and gasoline industries, and continued collecting right up until his passing in 2005. His son Mark and daughter-in-law Vickie took responsibility for the…
Paso Robles is a town half way between Los Angeles and San Francisco. This entirely volunteer-run museum aims to document life in a small Californian town during the 19th and 20th centuries. It offers an enormously diverse range of exhibits, many of which are displayed in reconstructed imitations of stores and business from the town's history. Highlights include a replica of the town's two cell…
Moffett Field is a joint civil-military airfield in the San Francisco Bay Area, founded in 1930 as a base for the U.S. navy airship the USS Macon. Today it is operated by NASA Ames Research Center, with parts of the facility leased out to Google. The Moffett Field Historical Society occupies Building 126 on the base, right next to Hangar One - one of the world's largest freestanding structures,…
In 1972 R. Thad Taylor, Founding President of the Shakespeare Society of America, rented a warehouse in West Los Angeles and the society constructed a half-scale replica of the interior of Shakespeare's London Globe as it existed in 1599, building from an unused space drama set donated by Ray Bradbury. They staged all 38 Shakespeare plays there, in order, from 1976 to 1979 and then again from 1981…