# Your favourite museum (and your least favourite museum)



## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Which museum / musea brings to you back nice memories. It doesn't matter at what location, how small or how big, and what kind of collection is being exhibited. Please add a link if possible. Between brackets you may also mention the venues that let you down.

Our favourites:
- The Dutch Open Air Museum in Arnhem https://www.openluchtmuseum.nl/park-en-gebouwen?taal=en

- The Mauritshuis in The Hague https://www.mauritshuis.nl/en/discover/mauritshuis/

- The Hermitage in St Petersburg https://srv1.hermitagemuseum.org/wps/portal/hermitage/?lng=

(Least favourite: The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Dark exhibition rooms, no photos, unpleasant watchdogs)


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## Chilham (Jun 18, 2020)

My particular favourite is the Weald and Downland Living Museum: https://www.wealddown.co.uk


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

*https://creationmuseum.org/*


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## Chilham (Jun 18, 2020)

:lol: .......................


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## GraemeG (Jun 30, 2009)

On theme - the Grassi musical instrument museum in Leipzig.
One of the oldest pianos in the world.
A travelling piano that folds up into a suitcase.
A saxophone taller than a man.
The weirdest collection of bassoons you've ever seen.
And, in fact, just downright oddest musical instruments ever made.
An unmissable collection.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Favourite art museum: Lenbachhaus Munich
Favourite non-art museum: already mentioned Dutch Open Air Museum in Arnhem


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

There are a number of great art museums that I've only visited once, e.g. Prado, Rijksmuseum, Hermitage, Uffizi, so I don't feel confident about ranking them. Favorites I've been to multiple times include National Gallery London, Frick (in NYC), Musee D'Orsay, Mass. MOCA.

Most overrated - Louvre.


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

I have visited many museums over the years. Here are six that I thought were really special. In no particular order:

The Getty Villa between Malibu and Santa Monica. Ancient Greek and Etruscan artifacts in an incredible setting. 

The National Railway Museum in York, England. I visited this place over thirty years ago, and I loved it. I must return.

The Borghese Museum in Rome. The incredible Bernini statues. 

The Hermitage in St Petersburg. Fabulous treasures in a fabulous building.

Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleontology in Drumheller, Alberta. Dinosaurs. Not too far from Calgary. You can tour the fossil sites (late Cretaceous, about 74 to 65 million years ago) outside and see the fossils in the building. And some fantastic dioramas. 

The Orsay Museum in Paris (Musee D'Orsay). I love impressionist art. Manet, Monet, Renoir, Cezanne. Ooh la la.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

One of the most curious museums we visited is / was the Artic & Antartic Museum in St. Petersburg. It is/was located in a church building close to the Nevsky Prospekt and expressed the deep felt belief in science in Soviet times in an exemplary manner. https://www.polarmuseum.info/ Alas, the Soviet times have fallen into disgrace and recently the city government of St Petersburg has conceded to the strong wish of the Russian Orthodox Church to return this building to church service. Who could have ever imagined this revolution in Russia that factually wipes out all existing physical references to the communist & Soviet past? All the churches that Stalin ordered to be burned have been meticulously restored and now the glory of Soviet believing: the belief in science, has to give way to the resurrection of the dead & forgotten church. O tempora, o mores!


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

It has to be the *Castle Museum* in York with its reconstructed Victorian street, Kirkgate, and its 'rooms' (Jacobean, 18th century, 19th century, & 'Moorland Cottage') - besides, it's the one I got to know almost by heart in my childhood. Cases full of fans - farming implements - incomprehensible Yorkshire vowel sounds coming from a tape-recorder in a sack. 
https://www.visityork.org/explore/york-castle-museum-p793441

The worst one - maybe some small town affair with labelled flint arrowheads and paintings by local worthies. It's hard to remember. I think it was Thetford Town Museum in 1966.

I'd have said the *Yorkshire Museum* in the Museum Gardens in York, as in my childhood it was full of stuffed birds and the best Roman artefacts were kept separately. But we visited a couple of years ago and it's *wonderful* now, with well-displayed and grouped artefacts and video imaginations of particular people whose grave goods have been discovered. In fact, I enjoyed it better than the Castle Museum, which has got just a little bit trendy* round the edges.
https://www.yorkshiremuseum.org.uk/

(There was a visiting display which consisted of people's handwritten notes and tape-recordings on what 'relationships' meant to them. Does anyone actually go to a museum for that, rather than watch a documentary or get a book of interviews out of the library? 
Each of the prison cells (York Castle is an old prison) had a video or sound recording about a former occupant, but this really meant that the Condemned Cell where Dick Turpin spent his last days was just another cell - when we went there in childhood & saw its stark walls, the iron bed and cleanable straw for a loo underneath, it made far more of an impression.)


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## Conrad2 (Jan 24, 2021)

Adachi Museum of Art - A Japanese Art Museum that has a glorious garden









Rothko Chapel - A quiet and secluded place for reflection. Much needed in my younger years. Just finished a lengthy renovation.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

This museum has a 360 degree mural that surrounds you. https://behalt.com/behalt-cyclorama/


> Behalt, meaning "to keep" or "to remember," is a 10 ft tall x 265 ft long cyclorama, or mural-in-the-round. Behalt illustrates the heritage of the Amish and Mennonite people from their Anabaptist beginnings in Zürich, Switzerland in 1525 to the present day.
> The story is told within the development of the early Christian church, the acceptance of Christianity by the Roman Empire under Constantine, and the growth of Roman Catholicism.
> Following the depiction of the first documented adult baptisms in modern times in Zürich in 1525, the cyclorama continues to follow the spread of the Anabaptist movement throughout the world. From this movement sprang the Mennonites, Amish and Hutterite people.


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