You haven’t seen the world if you haven’t lived and breathed the air of the museums that sit in the remotest corners of the world. Museums house the revolutionary fragments of culture, history, and art, all synchronized into one place which one should never miss.
Aside from that, the world is a peculiar place which is why there are some peculiar museums, different from the traditional run-of-the-mill museums. These museums often display whimsical things to portray life as it is— an unorganized miscellany of things.
Even though these museums sound different, they attract a lot of crowd for sheer amusement as well as to discover things from a different perspective. So, let’s take you around on a ride to the world’s weirdest museums.
The Museum Of Gold
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Yes, you heard it right–a museum painted in a sheer, glistening golden tint and it’s no ordinary museum too which many might mistake it for. It displays the brilliant works of goldsmiths belonging to disparate cultures and bringing it to diversify the museum.
Placed in Bogota, Columbia, the museum usually has goldsmithery from the era when the Spanish conquistadors hadn’t arrived. It hoards a staggering amount of 35,000 works of gold as an ode to the master craftsmanship of the people. The collection segregated into five floors, divided into disparate themes to exemplify the learning experience of the audience.
From your visit here, you’ll learn loads about how goldsmithery was conducted. You will also acquire knowledge about the craft of gold-smithery, the people belonging to the pre-Hispanic Columbia. In addition to this, knowing the symbols as well as embedded meanings of the works of the gold hoard is going to be a treat for you.
The Underwater Museum
Image Source: Wikipedia
This underwater museum in Cancun, Mexico is an extremely extraordinary and surreal sight to behold. This museum is an NPO(Not-For-Profit Organisation) with a focused emphasis on the preservation and conversation of art. It’s a magnificent series of sculptures, perfectly sculpted by masters back in time.
There are around 400 sculptures molded in alkaline cement, fiberglass, and other materials which are also eco-friendly. You can reach this underwater museum via four routes–scubas diving, snorkeling, through a glass-bottomed boat, or via a personalized tour. The site was in itself established to push the development of artificial reefs. Being eco-friendly activists, the museum curators want an ecosystem of coral reefs and other aquatic life to flourish around it.
The Museum Of Bad Art
Image Source: Wikipedia
Well, it does sound whimsical but it’s actually a decent and different approach to art. As the name suggests, it displays artworks that were “too bad” or “too ugly” or “failed” to earn a place in a museum. This museum in Somerville, USA aims to “collect and display the worst of the art world.”
This inspired idea originated from a painting– Lucy in the field with flowers which were not aesthetic to look at and the antique collector, Scott Wilson decided to summer all the ‘bad’ art he could find. It’s like hoarding the art that the society disapproves of or doesn’t fit into the societal beauty standards for art, all in one place.
The Museum of Broken Relationship
Image Source: Wikipedia
We know that heartbreak is properly life-changing and aches a lot but we didn’t know, anyone would be passionate enough to erect a museum in the name of it. In this bizarre museum, the objects at display are neither artwork nor any skilled craftsmanship but just depressing remnants from failed relationships.
People visit this museum to experience raw emotions of the past relationship of strangers but in an engaging manner. The museum is a hauntingly beautiful idea and a very unique idea to connect people, bed-ridden with grief all over the world. It emphasizes the difference between us humans while connecting us on our commonality and similarities as well.
Torture Museum
The Torture Museum in Amsterdam is exactly as horror-evoking and grotesque as it sounds. It compiles all the devices used for torturing purposes and for extortion of information. By displaying these devices, it aims to critique the inhumanity of mankind and stands as a stark reminder of the cruelty inherent in us.
It is a grisly maze of horrifying instruments, filled with unimaginable machinery which creates a gloomy atmosphere. Instruments like a guillotine; the horrifying Nuremberg Virgin, etc. are displayed ahead of whitewashed and bare brick walls to create an eerie atmosphere, distancing it from the traditional well-polished museums.
The Bottom Line
Museums were birthed into reality to preserve, conserve, and secure specks of memories, art, and culture. No matter how bizarre or whimsical or non-traditional this list of museums sounds, they do tick off these criteria.
These museums while some are avant-garde in function as well as ideas, others attempt to connect us through human emotions. Mostly, we need to normalize such out-of-the-box institutions in the face of art museums curating masterpieces and have more reproductions of such made like it’s done at https://www.1st-art-gallery.com.
