AGENDA
[ CULTURE ]
ON THIS PAGE: Demonstrating the movable walls at London’s Sir John Soane Museum. OPPOSITE PAGE: An exhibit at Berlin’s Museum of Things; the Jantar Mantar Complex in Jaipur, India; a chestnut-crushing clog at Toronto’s Bata Shoe Museum.
PECULIAR and
IMPASSIONED WITH THEIR SINGULAR COLLECTIONS AND SOMETIMES ECCENTRIC OWNERS, NICHE MUSEUMS HAVE THE POWER TO SURPRISE AND THRILL US – BY RUTH J. KATZ –
22 boldmagazine.ca
Photo courtesy of the Sir John Soane Museum
W
hen I made my first trip to Bangkok in 2014, I had a singularly knowledgeable guide, improbably named Diamond, and he was, indeed, a jewel. On our last day together, as we sped back to my hotel, I spied a building with a sign indicating it was the Bangkok Seashell Museum. “Oh, Diamond, why didn’t we visit that museum?” I asked. With his eyes popping out of his head in disbelief, he explained that it is hardly on anyone’s top-10 list. But for me, it would have been my first or second stop—temples can wait! Alas, I had no more time, and so the Bangkok Seashell Museum slipped onto a mental list of places I hoped to visit one day. As luck would have it, when I was leaving Thailand last year, my flight was cancelled and so, with extra time on my hands, I finally saw the Seashell Museum. And it did not disappoint. I love wacky, oddball museums. In London alone, I have sat for hours in The Hunterian (which reopens to the public in 2021), a collection of anatomical specimens, watching videos of spinal and brain surgeries; have shimmied through the narrow slivers of hallways in the Sir John Soane’s Museum, a former home chockablock with busts, statuary and ornamental tchotchkes; have marvelled at some of the more than 12,000 items in the Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising, where you can see the evolution of the packaging of Persil detergent or Heinz turtle soup or Head & Shoulders shampoo. Herewith a few more favourites that I have found fascinating. Also in Thailand, let me recommend the Hall of Opium Museum in Chiang Saen, in the heart of the Golden Triangle, on the Opium Trail. Through exhibitions, multimedia presentations and even an artificial poppy field, the museum strives to educate the public about the opium wars, drug smuggling, the development of morphine, government efforts to stem the tide of the scourge, the drug’s sundry paraphernalia and much more. There is even a diorama of an opium den. Most staggering is the nearly 140-metre, tunnel-like entryway—shadowy, foreboding, eerie—that sets a mood, perhaps of what life might be like addicted to heroin. maefahluang.org More an educational playground than a museum (and also a UNESCO World Heritage site), the Jantar Mantar (“calculating instrument”) observatory in Jaipur, India, is home to 19 immense (the sundial has a diameter of more than eight metres) astronomical instruments. Constructed from stone and marble, and spread out over acres, the instruments are
