It was left out of the weirdest museums of the world, but I guess they did alright with the Burt Reynolds and Friends Museum of Florida: “The Museum: You may know him only as the star of Smokey and the Bandit, but residents of Jupiter, Florida, also know him as a generous contributor, establishing a number of theater-centric programs since purchasing a ranch here some 30 years ago. Volunteers run this not-for-profit museum, dedicated to preserving the legacy of “the Bandit.”
The Exhibits: Sure, there are keys to the 10 plus cities he’s received, notes from A-listers like Jack Lemmon and Elizabeth Taylor, and an impressive collection of sports memorabilia, but the pièce de résistance is the sleek black Firebird Trans Am the beer-smuggling Reynolds, a.k.a. Bo “Bandit” Darville, drove in the classic 1977 film, Smokey and the Bandit.”

The Poggi Palace in Bologna, Italy, stands out to me as one of the weirdest museum experiences in my life. I tragically lost my own photos of the place in a hard drive crash, but the memory of a recreated 18th century gynecologist office, with all of its tools, surrounded by models of the fetus through development, is vivid enough to sustain that loss.

The Palazzo Poggi was given to the Universita di Bologna in 1805 and became a sort of experimental laboratory of human development.  Research and experiments using technology reinvented the organization of the University’s curriculum.  These activities have been absorbed into the palace’s 15th century architecture, and as their website says, not just metaphorically, the building’s cultural activities in the 19th and 20th centuries created an irreversible ambiance.  It’s true, the eerie quality of the building contributes to the absurdity of its collection.

Unfortunately, I missed this exhibit of dancing fetuses, perhaps it is a new addition since Spring 2007.

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

Highlights from the collection:
+ Golf Ball, 2008 (Found in the rough and once struck by Andrew Giuliani)
+ Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1990s (Reproduction, written up as a great work of art by an “Art Historian” seeking to quantify significance by counting text-book reproductions)

In their own words:
The Museum of Folly is widely recognized as the world’s foremost museum dedicated to educating an international audience about the contributions of clowns, jesters, oafs, and fools to the art and history of idiocacy, wrongheadedness, farce, and foolishness.

We would like to nominate our crummy webhost, lunarpages, whose servers were down for a while yesterday, for accession to the Museum. Perhaps we could donate some of the strands of hair we pulled out to the collection.

Our favorites from the digital collections section:
Face Painting Options in Mexico City
Documentation of Childhood Graffiti From Antique Sources
Documentation of Bibles Stolen From Hotels

Wish they would scan the ads, too.

Strangely, there’s little written info on the site about The Iceman himself.

Also: a 3d feature and a section devoted to the dude’s tattoos.

And: This organization must have the coolest (no pun intended) name ever, for they are THE INSTITUTE FOR MUMMIES AND THE ICEMAN.

Please note how we feature a cover in which the woman in question is a Doctor, not a nurse lusting after some skeezy male Doc. Feminism lives y’all.

Found via @archivesbitch on twitter, who rightly asks, Why can’t there be an Archivists Romance Cover of the Week Archive?