Today, the internet decided to create a travel guide for Me, Personally, in the form of a mildly-viral thread about unique museums:
what is the most unique museum u have visited
for me possibly the ramen museum
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darthbluesky) August 1, 2025 at 2:38 PM
After some thought, the most unique museum I have visited is the Tobacco and Salt Museum in Tokyo. It's unique among oddly-specific museums because it *isn't* someone's collection of Stuff that got out of hand, it's a well-curated museum run by Japan Tobacco, the company which formed when the Japan Tobbaco and Salt Public Corporation privatised. That corporation controlled the import anad manufacture of both both products in Japan until the 80s, hence it makes perfect sense to have a museum on the history of both! They also have an exhibition space: when I visted, they had an exhibition about matchboxes.
Here are some notes on other oddly specific museums I have visited. I included the Shipwreck Museum (Freemantle, Western Australia) in my Bluesky thread, but on reflection, there are a fair number of Shipwreck Museums in the world which approach maritime history through that lens. It's unique in that it's specific to Freemantle, but I gather that many maritime museums are simiarly local.
- The Phallological Museum, Rekjiavik: goes without saying. I found the bull's pizzle particularly enlightening (being familiar with the Fallstaff insult "you bull's pizzle").
- The Musée d'Eroticisme in Paris: Bad, at least as of 2011. Racist in the "insulting anthropologists" way - groups artefects from ancient Europe with items from 19th c Pacific Island cultures as "primitive". Collection of premodern Japanese art is wildly more heterosexual than, statistically, one ought to expect. The section on 19th c Paris was also way Too Straight, and dismissive of primary sources which reported lesbian relationships between sex workers/dancers/etc.
- The Schwules Musem, Berlin: has no permanent collection so every time you visit you get two exhibits on specific aspects of German queer history. When K and I visted there was an exhibition on queer experiences of disability, which was cool in many ways and which I thought did an excellent job with a quiet little corner on Nazi eugenic programs; and there was a fascinating exhibit on the East Berlin squat the "Tuntenhaus" (home to high fag drag queens and trans femmes) in the context of radical squat culture of the 80s.
- The Derwent Pencil Museum in Keswick: personally, I found this disappointing. Not enough museum too much shilling for Big Pencil.
- The Swiss Puppet Museum, Fribourg: why there is a Swiss Puppet Museum, and why it's in Fribourg, are unclear to me, but this was a fun little exhibition.
- The Nijntje (Miffy) Museum in Utrect is an absolute delight
- The Kattenkabinet in Amsterdam: a lovely 17th c house, bought up by a rich guy who has a madcap collection of cat art. There are cats roaming the rooms that you can pat.
- The Klingende Sammlung in Bern, which I like to translate as the "Noisemaking Collection". Wind and brass instruments. There's a downstairs with practical examples that they use for school groups - there weren't any the day K and I went, so the guy let us downstairs to try out Making Noises.
- Blundell's Cottage in Canberra. Every historic house is unique - this one I particularly love because I stumbled on it almost by accident, and because it's set up to exhibit / inform about working rural life in that area in the time before the creation of Canberra as a capital - and before Lake Burley-Griffin was created. There's photos in there of other farm cottages on the plain that became the lake.
- The Alpine Museum in Switzerland, which has some fun permanent exhibits - I particularly enjoyed a collection of donated objects relating to mountain sports, a collection of historic skis. When I visited they had a temporary exhibit on "Alpine trades" - heritage local trades and the schemes to encourage young people to train in them. There was an interactive bit where you could make roofing shingles. And they partner with other countries to put on exhibitions related to Mountain Stuff - I didn't see it but there was an exhibition about life in the North Korean mountains while I was living in Bern.
- The Gustave Moreau Museum in Paris. They have a bunch of his lesser-known or unfinished art - that's where I found
My favourite St Sebastian. Also they have the room which, after his mother died, Gustave turned into a weird sort of memorial shrine for his dead best friend (also the model for his St Sebastian paintings).
- The Potteries Museum in Stoke-on-Trent, ceramics gallery of. This is stretching the "unique" part because for the most part this is a solid Regional City Museum - I went there because they have some of the Staffordshire Hoard on display. But the ceramics gallery is truly unique - comprehensive in its narrow focus on the history of English pottery. They have a lovely medieval travel jug/mug shaped like an owl - the owl's head removes to become a cup. They have a giant fuck-off porcelain peacock. And a LOT of English from the peak industrial period, which makes sense given Stoke was, apparently, not so much a city as five factory towns in a trenchcoat.
- Musée des Troupes de Montagne, Grenoble. Turns out, there are specialist troops for Alpine combat!
and
- The Mechanical Toy Museum in Nara, Japan. There are many toy museums, and I have been to a few of them, but this one is unique. Instead of a large collection, they have one room with tatami mats, and a small collection of Edo period mechanical toys which operate using gravity and simple kenetic mechanics. The attendants don't speak English, but they give you a brochure and let you kneel on the tatami and gently play with the toys.
And while I'm here, let me note some of
( my Oddly Specific Museum wish-list )I'm a little short on oddly specific Australian museum goals. I did find out from that thread that the Cyril Callister Museum in Beaufort, Victoria, celebrates the creator of Vegemite and his famous product. And apparently that fuck-off porcelain peacock has a twin, kept in the Flagstaff Hill Maritime Museum in Warnambool (also Victoria).
There's a Printing Museum in Penrith (NSW). I don't consider that unique, there's a printing museum in every third European city - but I should totally check the local one out regardless.
Please, tell me about more oddly specific museums, anywhere in the world.
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