Laughing Kookaburras and Preserved Fetuses

Thank god the Museum of Animal Perspectives exists to post videos of what it looks like to walk through the woods from the top of a wolf’s head. But actually, this one is pretty good: Laughing Kookaburras

ART edited by Julia Turshen

Found this little gem photocopied and folded while moving things around to fit a gem of a dumpster dive. Wish I could remember where it came from… This is some pre-Batali and Gweneth go to Spain Julia Turshen humor.

BOMB the Borough

Just discovered B.O.M.B. — Brooklyn’s Other Museum of Brooklyn. This glorious fake Museums seems to have a real location on Wallabout street, and a bunch of “artifacts” promoting good local causes, along with other articles of vague historical import or curiosity.

We’re especially curious about the physical space itself, anyone been?

We also learned about the long-gone Wallabout Market, formerly the largest produce market on the East Coast from 1801 to 1939, before it was destroyed and swallowed up by the Navy Yards, never to return.

brush yer teef

Continuing our micro theme from last week, another entry in the medical/anatomy/freakshow/creep museum column, this time via an israeli flash site Antique Dental Instruments. Complete with gothic german font, embedded classical music, and animated fireplace in the footer, this rather extensive collection of photographs of antique dental instruments still manages to be impressive, if not comprehensive.

May you have dreams of antique dentists prying out your molars with 100-year old antiseptic and anaesthetic technologies!

kiosk kiosk

We turn now to Kiosk Kiosk, another vintage/antique shop which also dips its toes into the “exhibition” vernacular. And lo, they have an actual brick and mortar storefront on Spring St. in the City. We came across Kiosk Kiosk through the wonderful Reference Library blog, which specializes mostly in ebay finds (and losses, the best category is “Items I didn’t win“). Kiosk Kiosk boasts “mini exhibitions” which seem to be curated objects by friends or associates, for sale, from what we can tell.

They also have a very weird/cool/bewildering interface for their online catalogue. It’s not perfect but we like the effort.

junk culture

Next up, Junk Culture, who we discovered via twitter. Seems they’ve just started a simple tumblr image blog, which links mostly to Etsy postings (all their stuff on Etsy). This is an out and out shop, with no claim at museumdome, but we like their taste in vintage objects and somehow view them through a collector’s lens.

Recent stuff we like: A Pyrex Casserolle Dish, A Lamp made of Galvanized Iron, and a teal dinnerware set.

plan 59 from cyberspace

Plan 59, THE MUSEUM (AND GIFT SHOP) OF MID-CENTURY ILLUSTRATION. Really it’s just a shop, but again, a wonderful collection of images. Our favorites are the scary kids, demonic little angels, aren’t they?

Like project b, they sell to advertisers, libraries, and individuals alike. They also sell prints of Shorpy’s photo finds. We love these high-res images that he(she?) digs up from (mostly) public archives, but do remain dubious at his(her?) monetization of the project.

retail me not

We’re going to look at a bunch of museum-cum-retail outlets today, as the G20 assembles and capitalism faces the inevitability of a reality which does not align with models of constant expansion. We’ve touched on this a bit in the past, with “projects” (stores) such as the Etsy revolving paperback book “museum.” And to be fair, we kind of like these projects. They involve curation, they are genuinely filled with interesting items. We guess everything is for sale, in the end.

Read more about our first entry, Barbara Levine’s Project B

The Art Museum Toilet Museum of Art Museum Toilets

Some days are just fit for the crapper, like when it’s 44 and raining and you’ve got a meeting looming and all you really want to do is listen to music and wrap ourselves in a blanket. Instead, we’ll write out our monthly invoices and wrap up some projects, fix some bugs, and blog a little–and take a visit to the wonderful Art Museum Toilet Museum, our favorite kind of meta museum. Pictured at left, the RISD crapper, I took an amazingly well designed dump there once. (No I didn’t.) For the record, the Rubin has a really nice bathroom.

We look forward to contributing to their collection in the coming weeks! What are you most or least favorite Museum or LIbrary bathrooms? Do you keep a list like George Castanza of the best public places in which to relieve oneself?

fill my room full

We may never be able to afford a condo, but we sure can look at some kooky ones on the internet. The barftastic trendhunter webzine’s Eccentric Condo Exhibits include wacky wall framing, the burnt food museum, and the toaster museum. May we point your attention to the photo attached to this post, the most awesome Chorizo de la Verdad. That’s what she said?

I think I have hunted down a trend–fake museums as web galleries that you’ll smile at for a few minutes and then go on your merry way.

museum as retail

Here’s a new one: a revolving online collection and gallery of old paperback books, hosted via Etsy. They are for sale, of course, and as one leaves, a new book replenishes the gallery. A neat idea, by a seller named Librarycopy.

Related:
The Repetitive Pattern Paperback Book Cover pool on Flickr
So Much Pileup: Graphic Design Artifacts from the 1960s-1980s.

blog post as museum museum

The Bicycle Bell Musuem is a blog post written in 2005, but still worth three minutes of your life. What is Sprokkelhout? What does it mean? Does it involve pagans and wiccans? We don’t know, but we like their Bells.

Related, their other, two object Museum, the Bicycle Horn Museum.