The Thing museum

Yesterday I posted about a recent visit I made to the Last Supper Museum in Douglas, Arizona. On the same trip (in fact, on the same day) I also visited "The Thing" museum, which is off the I-10, about 70 miles north of Douglas (and 50 miles east of Tucson).

The two are both weird museums, but share no similarities beyond that.

The Last Supper Museum is the oddball passion project of an individual. The Thing, on the other hand, is highly commercialized and corporate-owned.

The commercialization begins with the numerous billboards advertising the museum up and down the I-10. Then, when you arrive, you find that it's part of a gas station/travel stop complex. To get to the museum itself you have to walk through a gigantic gift store.





The Thing wasn't always like that. It started out sixty years ago as a roadside attraction run by Thomas Binkley Prince. He displayed a few oddities, such as a car that he claimed had belonged to Hitler, as well as a mummified humanoid body that he called "The Thing" (the namesake of the museum).

Prince died in 1969, and the museum was eventually acquired by Bowlin Travel Centers, Inc.

In the 2010s, Bowlin expanded and updated the museum. They evidently decided to capitalize on the "Ancient Aliens" craze, because the majority of the museum is now devoted to telling the story of an extraterrestrial race, the RAH'thians, and their ongoing interaction with life on Earth, beginning with the dinosaurs and continuing through to the present day.

You walk through a winding exhibit hall, past life-size models of extraterrestrials and dinosaurs (and extraterrestrials fighting dinosaurs with laser guns). The models are pretty cool and very professionally done. The problem is that it all comes across as a bit jokey and tongue-in-cheek, which negates the weird factor.







Questions are frequently posed on the walls.





Finally you arrive at a room in which the original Thing is displayed. The connection between the Thing and the preceding dinosaurs and extraterrestrials wasn't clear to me.

It cost $5 to see the entire museum, which isn't a lot. If you happen to be driving down the I-10, I'd say go see it. But I wouldn't make a special trip to visit it.

More info: RoadsideAmerica.com; Wikipedia.

Posted By: Alex - Tue Dec 17, 2024 - Comments (5)
Category: Aliens, Museums, Dinosaurs and Other Extinct Creatures, Arizona

The Last Supper Museum

Down in the small Arizona border town of Douglas (population 16,000), one can find the Last Supper Museum, which hosts hundreds of works of art inspired by Da Vinci's masterpiece. It's a strange location for a museum dedicated to a piece of high Renaissance art — Douglas doesn't really spring to mind as a cultural hotspot — but then it's a strange museum.

Last week my wife and I spent a few days driving around southern Arizona, checking out various sights such as Chiricahua National Monument. So, since we were in the neighborhood, we decided to visit the Last Supper Museum.



Based on its name, you might think the museum would be filled with Christian devotional pieces. And the curator reports that quite a few people who visit it expect this to be the case. But instead, it's the opposite. The museum skews heavily towards the offbeat, weird, and irreverent. It's really about all the bizarro ways Da Vinci's mural has been transformed and reinterpreted by modern culture.

So, for instance, you've got versions of the Last Supper done in unusual mediums such as banana fibers, coal, shoes, tupperware, and ostrich eggs. You've got Last Suppers in which Jesus and the apostles have been replaced by characters from pop culture (a lot of Star Wars, cats, extraterrestrials, Harry Potter, etc.). You've got social commentary, such as a banned-book version of the Last Supper. And mixed in with all this, you find more traditional, devotional pieces, such as some very impressive wood carvings.

Banana Fiber Last Supper

"The Last Slipper"

And then there's the curator, Eric Braverman, who hails from the world of Heavy Metal. He spent years traveling with bands such as Slayer, Metallica, and Megadeath. Much of the funding for the museum came from a donation made by Tom Araya, bassist for Slayer. Braverman totally looks like a metalhead, and that just adds to the weird, idiosyncratic nature of the museum.

We showed up unannounced, but Braverman happily gave us a guided tour for over an hour, filling us in on the backstory of each exhibit. He's definitely a natural showman. At one point he was rolling around on the floor to illustrate a point.

Eric Braverman, Last Supper Museum curator

So, overall I'd say the museum is a must-see if you're in the area. I'd even rank it among the top-tier best weird museums I've ever been to, up there with the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles and Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum in Detroit. Although I think you really need Braverman acting as a guide to get the full experience of the Last Supper Museum.

More info: LastSupperMuseum.com; Roadside America article about the museum; Arizona Republic article.

Extraterrestrial Last Supper

Ostrich Egg Last Supper

Velvet Last Supper

"Your Last Supper"

Posted By: Alex - Mon Dec 16, 2024 - Comments (2)
Category: Art, Museums, Arizona

The Ladies Lounge

Down in Tasmania, the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) was sued for having a "Ladies Lounge" (a dining area where high tea was served) that wasn't open to men. Kirsha Kaechele, the artist responsible for the Lounge, then proceeded to turn the trial itself into a strange kind of performance art. From the BBC:


The museum lost the case. Kaechele responded by installing a toilet in the Ladies Lounge so that, as a women's restroom, men could legally continue to be excluded.

More info: artnet.com

Posted By: Alex - Sun Jul 28, 2024 - Comments (1)
Category: Museums, Lawsuits, Women

Moist Towelette Museum

Located inside Abrams Planetarium on the campus of Michigan State University. The curator of the museum is Planetarium employee John French who's been collecting towelettes since the 1990s.

The crown jewel of the museum's collection seems to be the Star Trek towelettes.



Other interesting towelettes include Mammo-wipes and Xerox typewriter waterless handcleaners.



More info: Moist Towelette Museum

Posted By: Alex - Sat Apr 13, 2024 - Comments (1)
Category: Museums, Baths, Showers and Other Cleansing Methods

The New Domestic Landscape

Fifty years ago, a group of designers, showcased at MOMA, tried to predict the way we'd live.

As usual with these efforts, there were more misses than hits.

More pix here and here.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Jun 29, 2023 - Comments (1)
Category: Domestic, Museums, 1970s, Europe, Yesterday’s Tomorrows

The new Perth Museum

In order to find a name for the new museum opening in Perth City Hall, city officials surveyed the public and considered over 450 ideas before deciding to call it "Perth Museum." bbc.com



This recalls the time, in 1973, when the Army Materiel Command (AMC) held a contest to name its new headquarters and, after considering 524 different proposals, awarded the prize to the guy who suggested calling it the AMC Building.

Posted By: Alex - Fri Nov 11, 2022 - Comments (0)
Category: Museums, Odd Names

Frontiers in Modern Art

Read full article here.

Posted By: Paul - Tue Nov 01, 2022 - Comments (1)
Category: Body, Museums, Sexuality, Public Indecency

Unauthorized Dwellings Twenty-Four

Full story here.

Posted By: Paul - Tue Jul 12, 2022 - Comments (0)
Category: Family, Museums, Unauthorized Dwellings, Weapons

The Devil’s Rope Museum

I just returned from a cross-country road trip — visited family on the East Coast then drove back home to Phoenix, which recently became my home. Along the way I stopped at the "Devil's Rope and Route 66 Museum" in McLean, Texas, located on the I-40 east of Amarillo. 'Devil's Rope' is a term for barbed wire.



I hadn't expected the barbed wire section of the museum to be very interesting. I stopped to see the Route 66 memorabilia. But the barbed wire display turned out to be the better part of the museum. Definitely worth checking out if you're ever in the area.

As one might expect, the museum had a lot of info about the use of barbed wire in cattle farming. But it also included a large section about military uses of barbed wire.

Barbed Wire Cutter during World War I

How to build a 'Knife Rest' - War Department, Jan 1944

There were also random oddities, such as a barbed wire hat and boot.

"Hat made by Kevin Compton in 1985. Made from Burnell Four Point Barbed Wire found on the west side of the Rio Grande River near Dixon, New Mexico."

"Barb-Wire Boot"

And in the entrance to the museum, one could view samples of dirt collected from every county in Texas.

Posted By: Alex - Sun Jun 05, 2022 - Comments (0)
Category: Museums, Farming

The Torre Galatea Museum

Created by---who else?--Salvador Dali.

A nice write-up with more pix at this link.

Posted By: Paul - Mon May 09, 2022 - Comments (3)
Category: Art, Surrealism, Museums, Europe, Twentieth Century