Ask Lemmy

The Steven Udvar Hazy museum in Dulles VA is another excellent air and space museum. And now that the National Air & Soace museum is being renovated it’s better honestly.

Another great one is the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, WY. Lots of Buffalo Bill exhibits and the largest gun collection in the world. It’s easily a 2 day museum and unexpectedly great.

I'm enjoying this thread, I've been to many of the museums already mentioned and they're all great.

For me I think my current favourite is the Natural History Museum in New York which I went to a couple of months ago. It was enormous and every room had a few really special things. I learnt so much!

My all time favourite is just so difficult. I really enjoyed The House of Terror in Budapest, I really didn't know anything about the topic at all and I was thoroughly educated.

I'd also give a special mention to a museum in Rhodes that was full of sculptures they'd pulled from shipwrecks. The geography means there's a lot of shipwrecks nearby and those date from ancient Greece onwards. The oldest sculptures were well rounded by the water and it gave them a very weird ethereal look.

Aside from all the world famous obvious answers the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto CA was unexpectedly good. Saw a boot from a space suit, Shaq’s giant sneaker, a golden sandals that belonged to a king and lots of other cool stuff.

Natural History Museum in London... before you even get to the exhibits it has some of the most breathtaking architecture.

I haven't been to any outside the US, and admittedly not that many in, with how many there are. So far The Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix has been one of the most interesting to me and I didn't see it all by far. There is a "petting zoo" downstairs with a selection of instruments you can play too! It was crazy satisfying to bang a big gong.

I haven't been to many museums, but the Corning museum of glass was interesting.

Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria. It hosts exhibitions about technology and humans and I was completely blown away.

Also they have a large 3D room where you get shown around our galaxy... That put me into an existential crisis for a few days.

The Computerspielemuseum or Computer Game Museum in Berlin.

It has 3 rooms setup as timecapsules with a console setup in each.

The highlight was the PainStation where you played Pong against another player, and the loser got an electric shock or heat applied through the a panel on the game. Excellent.

Rijksmuseum van oudheden in Leiden in the Netherlands.

As a kid in the early 80s I used to go there often. It was free then and had and still has a lot of artifacts from Egyptian, Roman and Greek history. Also Leiden is a nice place to visit anyway.

Vasa Museum in Stockholm

I finally got to see a Saturn V up close last year, as well as the control room for the moon landings. I've always wanted to visit, and last year I found myself on a Houston work trip with a day to spare.

The Dalí museum in Figueres, Spain. Just nice whacky art all over the place.

My 6th grade class took a field trip from Biloxi MS to New Orleans to see the visiting Tutankamon exhibit in 1977. It was the first real museum I'd visited, plus we'd spent the semester studying Egyptian history.

The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles should get a mention for being so weird.

Singapore’s cultural history museum was my fave. Small but well designed and explained everything that led up to Singapore existing in a walking format. It wasn’t exactly large.

I love the tar pits in Los Angeles, the orsay in Paris, the Picasso museum in Barcelona, the sixth floor in Dallas, and any of the DC museums.

The museum island in Berlin. Just so many interesting artifacts from ancient cultures, you could easily spend multiple days there. (Just don't think too hard about what all those artifacts are doing in Berlin while you're there...)

#1 The archeological museum in Krakow. https://ma.krakow.pl/en/main-page/

It's an old school museum, which tend to be my favorites, but there had been an art exhibition installed the week before so there were art installations displayed alongside the regular exhibits. The whole experience was wonderfully weird. It wasn't always 100% clear what was part of the regular exhibit and what was art, because some of the regular exhibits were pretty weird. Was there an entire elaborate exhibit (with light-up displays) about the hydrogeology of southern Poland? What was the very Soviet-bloc looking sewing machine doing in that one room? Adding to the fun, the docents were very very insistent upon the order in which you visited each room. I think that was completely normal for them, but it added to the weirdness. There was also a mirror that would sound an alarm if you approached too closely. Its purpose was unclear. When we went in we were not expecting some of the exhibits to be... off.

#2 The Museum of Jurassic Technology in LA. https://mjt.org/

Apparently now open by appointment only. It's weird by design, which is why it gets #2 rating.

#3 Any museum where you walk in and mentally say, "I've made a huge mistake." These tend to be small places where it's just you, your equally uncomfortable spouse, and the curator/owner. You're getting a special tour. I mean, you know in your heart that he's more interested in showing your his weird shit than murdering you, but the question of whether you'll feature in the next exhibit is always floating in the air. They may not have the nicest stuff to look at, but you remember the experience.

Goes without saying if you are in D.c. all the Smithsonians. But I also recomed the Spy museum. Very unique and new building is very cool.

I visited Guedelon castle, a site were they are building a medieval castle the medievall way since 1997. It's about two thirds finished now.

It's surrounded by people working trades, just like back in the day. There's a water mill, pottery, blacksmiths, masons, pigment makers and everything.

It's living history, not in the American way were they pretend to be from the period, but people into crafts you can ask stuff.

It's one of the more unique muséal expériences I've had.

A tiny museum within sight of Prague Castle. Another tiny museum SOMA San Francisco. Both had amazing art/artists, were completely empty of people, and I have no clue where they are now or what artists I saw.

Georgia Aquarium (Atlanta). Trixie and friends. #IYKYK #notPorn

Second best? Every museum we went to in Sweden was free. "Go on in, see some viking stuff."

Most disappointing? Phallus.is , pretty much nothing but what you think it is. Good for a lark and a titter but no revelations.