Yahoo Finance The Best, Weird Museums of New York City
Nobody does weird like New York City, whose cultural institutions are just as likely to host an exhibition of Troll dolls, DIY taxidermy workshops, or over 200,000 pounds of dirt as a priceless masterpiece. Below, a roundup of the city's best unconventional museums and galleries, for your viewing (and Instagramming!) pleasure.
Morbid Anatomy Museum
The Morbid Anatomy Museum is part art exhibition of death-related artifacts, part 1,000-book strong research library. It's also the frequent home to mega popular events like taxidermy workshops, eerie singles nights, and a recent gala hosted by '90s cool girl Parker Posey. Come for the drawers of old teeth, stay for the museum shop, which sells witchy jewelry, veladora effigy candles, and coffee in an attached café.
Mmuseum
It may seem impractical to house an entire museum in a space the size of an Upper East Side closet, but Mmuseumm is all about the bizarre. The tiny gallery space, wedged into a former Chinatown freight elevator, delights in the absurd, using an untraditional curatorial approach to display eccentric collections. This season's exhibitions include diminutive collections of Trump merchandise, ISIS currency, fake American fast food franchises from Iran, and the Cornflake Taxonomy (which, like it sounds, is a labeled collection of cornflakes in size order). All of the above are crammed into the space, filling it in neat rows from floor to ceiling. No timed tickets, or tickets at all, are necessary-just show up on Thursdays and Fridays from 6–9 p.m. or Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 6 p.m.
Museum of Sex
The Museum of Sex explores the modern culture and history of human sexuality, combining a hefty collection of sex-related objects with unique installations from some of the art world's biggest names. The collection is perhaps most famous for including a piece found all over Instagram-Jump For Joy, a bouncy castle filled with giant breasts. #Freethenipple indeed. Unsurprisingly, visitors must be over 18.
Torah Animal World
Torah Animal World is an appointment-only taxidermy museum that specializes in stuffing biblical animals. Exhibits span from Birds of the Torah to shratzim-the tiny critters, like bugs and small reptiles, that the Old Testament banned as unkosher. Torah Animal World is one-third of the larger Living Torah museum, whose mission is to provide interactive exhibits that bring the Old Testament to life-in this case, through death. The $10 entrance fee gives you unlimited roaming for an hour-think of the face swapping potential!
The Museum of the Moving Image
The Museum of the Moving Image is the true millennial's museum, devoting entire exhibitions to trendy topics like How Cats Took Over the Internet and indie video games. Fittingly housed inside the long-defunct East Coast wing of Paramount Pictures, the museum explores the art and science of TV, film, and the digital world. The Astoria-based museum screens over 400 films annually, ranging the films of this year's Panorama Europe film festival to classics like Bladerunner.
Troll Museum
Fans of kitsch, meet your Mecca: the Troll Museum, home to the most impressive troll doll collection, well, anywhere. The docent and curator is the legendary Lower East Side performance artist and "trollologist" Reverend Jen, who's donned a pair of elf ears since 2006. The museum's official "Mona Lisa" is a two-headed '60s era troll doll, but other artifacts range from punk trolls to a "haunted troll" riddled with stab wounds. By day, the sixth floor Chinatown walk up is Rev Jen's apartment, so call ahead to make an appointment: 212-560-7235
The Museum at FIT
The permanent collection at The Museum at FIT includes over 50,000 garments from a two hundred year span, made by iconic designers like Balenciaga, Chanel, and Dior. Uniformity, an exhibit centered around various types of uniforms that juxtaposes U.S. Army World War I service uniforms with fashionable takes on military dress from designers like Comme des Garçons, opens May 20. Don't miss the deliciously nostalgic, classic '70s era flight attendant uniforms!
MOFAD
The Museum of Food and Drink (MOFAD) is rooted around a single idea: that experiencing the joy and culture of food can help solve problems like food inequality, environmental impact, and endangered regional cultures. It currently exists as the MOFAD Lab, an "exhibit design studio" that showcases single exhibits in a Brooklyn gallery space while funds are raised for a full-scale museum. Currently showing is Flavor: Making it and Faking It, an engaging and truly interactive exploration of manufacturing food. Inside, "smell machines" waft out puffs of almond extract and citral, the chemical that gives lemons their distinctive, brightly sour smell. Aspiring foodies will appreciate exhibits like the cheekily named "What the &@^$ is Umami?"
Museum of the American Gangster
Housed inside a real-i.e., not in Williamsburg or the Lower East Side-former speakeasy, the Museum of the American Gangster outlines the life of Al Capone and other crime families. Tours led by uber history buffs also include a trip to a '20s era gangster bunker hideout-a great look at the sepia-toned days of New York City.
The Neue Galerie
The Neue Galerie is a gorgeous, elegant, and understated museum of early twentieth-century German and Austrian art. Though its collection is well known, it's a Museum Mile gem that can be overlooked by the crowds of tourists traipsing from the Met to the Guggenheim. With that extra space you can linger in front of Klimt's famous "Woman in Gold" painting, or, until June 13, Munch's "The Scream." Museum admission is free on the first Friday of the month from 6 p.m.–8 p.m.
The New York Earth Room
The New York Earth Room is, as its title suggests, a single SoHo room filled with 280,000 pounds of dirt. The third and only remaining earth room from American sculptor Walter De Maria, it's been on long-term view to the public since 1980. This is definitely not a hands-on type of gallery, but visitors are welcome to look, photograph, and revel in the strangeness of its existence. The free entrance alone makes it a worthy SoHo shopping stint detour. Come Wednesday–Sunday, 12–6 p.m.
Sculpture Center
Sculpture Center has over 80 years of displaying contemporary sculpture under its belt. The non-profit institution's current iteration is housed in a former Long Island City trolley repair shop with an industrial aesthetic that veers into haunted. The twisting lower level gallery has more than its fair share of claustrophobia-inducing nooks and crannies, a somewhat fitting backdrop to the frequently conceptual works. Sculpture Center is right around the corner from MOMA PS1-make a day of it.
