Curators of the esoteric

Jarkko and I will be moving to Helsinki at the end of the year and I have been giving some thought to making sure he sees a bit more of America before then. Since he can't seem to bear to leave home for more than a few hours on the weekends I started looking for interesting sights here in New England and found a small collection of Little Museums. I love boutique-like museums as they have a lot more flexibility to be creative and serve a niche that would be overlooked by the mainstream art and history world.

The Museum of Dirt. It seems absurd at first but it's interesting and certainly a labour of love to catalogue all of the vials. It's only on-line so it saves a trip out of the house right there. :)

Higgins Armory Museum is the only museum in the Western Hemisphere solely dedicated to arms and armor and even the art deco building it is housed in is a historic landmark. This museum would go well with the Hammond Castle built by the eccentric father of the remote control.

The American Sanitary Plumbing Museum so we could see what the plumbing in my house really looks like since I doubt any of it has been replaced in the past 80 years.

The Museum of Useful Things is right around the corner from Harvard.

The Museum of Bad Art is just down the road in Dedham in the basement of the local theatre. Nothing can quite prepare you for the depth and the breadth of this collection of truly awful art. I envision the curators visiting only the finest dumpsters in Southie and yardsales in Medford to enhance their permanent collections.

Hopefully we'll take the long road to YAPC this summer and see the Jack Daniels Distillery, Mammoth Cave, Graceland with Memphis, and Chicago before heading for the tundra where reindeer roam.