Alex WildAug 21, 2023
What’s your favorite museum, and why? Can be big, small, esoteric, national, public, private, anything.
Show threadRich Stein (he/him)

@alexwild Sir John Soane's Museum 🇬🇧
https://www.soane.org/collections
&
Phila's Mütter Museum, now sadly mired in controversy. I met Oliver Sacks there. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/07/26/mutter-museum-controversy-philadelphia/

I always thought it was cool that the intellectual curiosity of individuals led them to create such fascinating spaces. One can take a more current view & read a lot of imperialism, colonialism, etc. into the picture, but at the time, collecting was knowledge creation (albeit inconsiderate).

Collections

Sir John Soane’s Museum is a national museum, displaying the extraordinary collections amassed by renowned British architect Sir John Soane, including antiquities, furniture, sculptures, architectural models and drawings, and paintings including work by Hogarth, Turner and Canaletto. Spanning continents and millennia, many objects are on permanent display. Others, including 30,000 architectural drawings, can be seen by appointment at the Research Library. You can also browse the Museum’s collections of thousands of objects online, or explore our spaces in 3D with Explore Soane.

Sir John Soane's Museum
Aug 21, 2023 at 3:19amWeb
Show threadRich Stein (he/him)Aug 21, 2023
@alexwild Best kid museums: Academy of Natural Sciences https://ansp.org/ and Franklin Institute https://www.fi.edu/en Dinosaur fossils and spectacular insect and seashell collections at the former — and a pickled coelacanth, the living fossil! — and crazy, wild mechanical stuff (the steam locomotive, pendulum and planetarium are always big hits) at the latter.
The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University

Show threadRich Stein (he/him)Aug 21, 2023
@alexwild Not trying to be Philly-centric, but they are winners.