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

When 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 fascinating. Among other things, they variously measure time, calculate longitude and latitude of celestial bodies, track the location of major stars as the Earth orbits them and determine celestial altitudes. One instrument even calculates the Hindu calendar and is used but once each year. This is one (and the best preserved) of five observatories built in the early 18th century by Rajput King Sawai Jai Singh. jantarmantar.org

An exhibit at Berlin's Museum of Things

“The Museum of Things” is a rough translation of Berlin’s Werkbundarchiv Museum der Dinge, a paean to “stuff.” The museum’s collections chronicle product culture through the 20th and 21st centuries, as mass production and industrial manufacturing blossomed. The tall vitrines house all manner of merchandise—variously grouped by colour, function, period, country of origin, whatever. The museum offers a short film, interesting and edifying, on the celebrated double-bladed Berlin key. There is also a fascinating replica of a 1920s Frankfurt kitchen. Revolving exhibits are also mounted, and one might find one chronicling the history of eroticism, or a display featuring many odd-looking implements with mysterious purposes; the public is invited to speculate as to their functions. museumderdinge.de

Prepare to step back in time to the 18th and 19th centuries at the Dennis Severs’ House in Spitalfields, in the eastern outreaches of London. Severs was an American who bought and slowly renovated a dilapidated 10-room, terraced home. He decorated it to reflect how it would have been furnished if it had been inhabited by a fictional family named Jervis (presumably, originally Gervais), who were prosperous, Huguenot silk weavers. The rooms in the Georgian home form time-capsule tableaux of family life, with various periods reflected in the décor. Severs wanted visitors to feel that the residents had just left, so touching details dot the interior landscape of this still-life drama. dennissevershouse.co.uk

Although it is positioned as a children’s museum, adults will be likewise charmed by the World of Discoveries (Museu Interativo & Parque Tematico) in Porto, Portugal. Lest you forget that before Britannia ruled the waves, the Portuguese planted their flag all around the globe—at this museum, period-costumed and multilingual interpreters (Henry the Navigator, for example) will remind you, expanding upon the multi-dimensional exhibits, stunning miniature replicas of galleons, among the mix. The museum is a bit of a theme park, too: Hop into a self-propelled skiff, as you explore the other half of the museum by boat—a trip around the world with dioramas that will excite and educate. worldofdiscoveries.com

I would also recommend the Robert Wan Pearl Museum in Papeete, French Polynesia; the Coral and Cameo Museum in Torre del Greco, Italy, in the Liceo Artistico Degni (the School of Arts); the amazing Pharmacy Museum (Deutsches Apotheken-Museum), located in the Heidelberg Castle, Germany; the shrine to three-dimensional embroidery in the private (accessible) museum of the Kohinoor Jewellers in Agra; and, of course, the very special Bata Shoe Museum, right in Toronto’s backyard.

The Jantar Mantar Complex in Jaipur, India

A chestnut-crushing clog at Toronto's Bata Shoe Museum