Cowgirls, Cockroaches and Celebrity Lingerie: The World's Most Unusual Museums
By (Author) Michelle Lovric
Icon Books
Icon Books
1st January 2008
United Kingdom
Hardback
256
354g
Strange things, human beings. They get passionate about strange things, too. All over the world and throughout the ages people have accumulated the extraordinary objects of their affection. Some of these collections are now museums.
Michelle Lovric presents an armchair pilgrimage to some of the world's oddest and most interesting. They include museums of asparagus, lawnmowers, ships in bottles, the pets of American presidents, menstruation, worry beads and burnt food.
There's the vast Spam museum in Minnesota, the tiny Carrot Museum in Belgium, Iceland's elegant and studious Phallological Museum, the hi-tech Parasite Museum in Japan, the chilling Museum of Madness in Venice, or London's atmospheric Old Operating Theatre.
Each page describes in colourful detail a different eccentric or remarkable museum. Curators explain the reasons behind their collections. Other museums let their exhibits speak for themselves - conclusive proof that oneman's rubbish is another man's relic.
Troubled by how conformist, boring and homogenous the world sometimes seems Cowgirls, Cockroaches and Celebrity Lingerie is the ideal tonic - a darkly hilarious celebration of the infinite variety of human weirdness.
"'Mustard is like a canvas, allowing the creation of great works of culinary art.' Barry Levenson in the Mustard Museum's catalogue 'Pets and Presidents. Presidents and Pets. Discover the Connection.' The Presidential Pets Museum"
Michelle Lovric writes, researches, translates and designs anthologies and gift books. Her Love Letters - An Anthology of Passion was a New York Times bestseller. She has published three historical novels, one of which, The Remedy, was long-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction. She divides her time between London and Venice.