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Arts & Entertainment: Online Museums and Art
Exhibits
The best of the worst and some that are just
plain fun
One of the great things about the web is that
not only can anyone open an oddball museum, but that we can visit them
without having to budge from our armchairs. Below
is a list of some our favorites, sites that boggled our minds or simply
made us smile. However, this is only a fraction of the online museums
and art exhibits out there. If we've missed one of your favorites, please
tell us about it.
Exhibit Rating System
= Amazing, earthshaking, not to be missed.
= Edifying or otherwise pretty darned good.
= Diverting; worth a visit if you're bored and have nothing else to do.
Kitsch
Klassics
Giant
drinking birds
Creepy, wonderful, life size. The world would be a better place if people
had these in their front yards.
Happy
Drinking Bird
In case the previous site didn't sate your interest in drinking birds,
this page offers history, an identification guide and troubleshooting
tips.
Etch-A-Sketch
art
These are simply amazing, but the real question is how the artist made
them without going nuts.
Victoria
and Albert Museum of Childhood
Read about the history and construction of the Etch-A-Sketch, Mr. Potato
Head, and other childhood toy favorites.
Bad Fads
Museum
"The fads you wish would stay forever ... or never come back."
Categories involve fashion, collectibles, activities and events, with
A-Z listings hitting the highlights in each area. This site is heavy in
advertising though, including ads right in the middle of the content!
Bad paintings
Thrift
Store Art
"Trippy" is the word that comes to mind as one looks at these
pieces, most of which were acquired from thrift stores or the like. Most
are unburdened by conventional notions of composition or good taste, which
makes them even more interesting.
Museum
of bad art
In the words of the site itself, "The world's only museum dedicated
to the collection, preservation, and celebration of bad art in all its
forms. .... The pieces in the MOBA collection range from the work of talented
artists that have gone awry to works of exuberant, although crude, execution
by artists barely in control of the brush. What they all have in common
is a special quality that sets them apart in one way or another from the
merely incompetent"
Museum
of Fred
More thrift store art. The collection is not as comprehensive as that
of thriftstoreart.com,
but it's nonetheless a nice browse.
Black velvet
"Limited-Edition
Black Velvet Portraiture from Tijuana, Mexico"
This is a sale site, not a museum or gallery, but the paintings are both
plentiful and kitschy.
The Museum
of Velvet Paintings
This is the website for a brick-and-mortar museum - a great one, judging
by the fact that their storefront has a typing paper sign declaring "museum"
posted in its front window. Alas, the site doesn't have many photos, but
the ones it has are charmingly bad.
Villa
Velour
An online museum "featuring the masterpieces of Edgar William Leeteg
of Tahiti". Expect lots of paintings of attractive, topless anglicized
Tahitians. Leeteg aficionados may find find it a useful resource. However,
the site's hard-to-read type and small picture reproductions make it less
than pleasurable to browse.
Miscellaneous oddities
Interesting
ideas
"Outsider art, roadside art, eccentric culture." The design
and layout of this site make it a little hard to wade through, but that's
okay; it's reminiscent of an antique store with slanting floors and a
labyrinth of display cases. Like such an antique store it's full of oddities
that catch your eye, and while it may not be clear what some of them are,
they sure are interesting.
Bathtub
Art Museum
"A not-for-profit museum dedicated to the bathtub in art." Exhibits
primarily consist of postcards dating from the 1900s to the present. The
site also includes photos of a tub-shaped cakes and depictions of bathtubs
the museum's curator has encountered around the world. Not to be missed:
a page of dumb bathtub-related laws and a charming photo of the curator
pretending to wash the hair of a wax prisoner at the Inveraray, Scotland,
Old Prison. A great site for bathtub and postcard lovers alike.
Fiber arts
Museum
of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art
Quilted brains .. knitted brains ... what will they think of next? (Probably
very little if they're dependent on one of the textile brains to do the
thinking.) Very nicely offbeat, and a great example of how traditional
media don't have to carry traditional messages.
Needlepoint
museum
A showcase of some of the most banal pieces of needlework ever conceived.
 The
art of the edible
San
Francisco in Jell-O by Liz Hickock
It's edible! It's a city! This is all the more amazing when you realize
that Hickock had to make a mold for every darned building depicted. At
one time the site included a video of the Jell-O city experiencing a faux
earthquake, which was truly something to behold. Sadly, this clip is nowhere
to be found now.
Chewed gum
art
Works of art created from chewing gum plus great interviews explaining
the process. (In a nutshell: chew gum, apply to surface. Repeat.) Kits
are available if you'd like to create your own piece but don't feel
qualified to choose your own gum.
Buba,
by Stuart Wagner
Whimsical, macabre, and disturbing: a pig sculpture formed from pork rinds
and wood.
Washington
Banana Museum
One single page of banana-related paraphernalia that goes on ... and on
... and on. Still, there are some interesting things on it, such as the
banana-shaped records and Chiquita Banana ride-on toy.
Individual artists
Teletubby
collages
See Teletubbies in some veeeery unusual situations in this marvelous set
of collages.
Liza
Lou - Kitchen
These photos depict a kitchen entirely covered in beads and are a pale
shadow of its genius and complexity. If you ever have a chance to see
this piece in person, do! More on Liza Lou and her kitchen: CBS
news, Art
MoCo
Stan
Munro - Toothpick city
An amazing collection of world landmarks constructed from toothpicks.
In fact, this piece required more than two million toothpicks, which means
that its creator has no darned excuse if he has bits of food stuck in
his teeth. The bio of the city's creator is no less interesting than the
city itself, which is always gratifying.
The Scatological
Virtual
Toilet Paper Museum
The site
is a bit difficult to navigate, but the persistent will find many rare
toilet paper treasures. Exhibits include contemporary and vintage papers,
some dating back to the 1800s.
Caganer
figures
Caganer are Catalonian statuettes of defecating people which are placed
in manger scenes. Not only are these perversely interesting and a little
gross, but you can purchase figurines of some of your favorite present-day
personalities in the midst of that very private act, such as the Pope
and George Bush. There are even defecating angels
and Christmas trees.
Fashion
Condom
dresses
Although the dresses are amazing, the small photos on this site make it
difficult to get a sense of their complexity and workmanship. Those who
don't speak Portuguese may find the site challenging to navigate. This
blog has an excellent photo of four of the dresses.
Toilet
paper wedding dresses
This page displays the results of a toilet paper wedding dress contest,
a lovely example of what the motivated can do with unusual materials.
The site is very ad-heavy though, so be
sure to scroll through the advertising placed right in the middle of the
content (!!!) to see all of the dresses.
Toilet
paper couture
These boggle the mind. It would be nice if the photos were a little larger,
though, so we could see for ourselves that the garments really are made
of toilet paper.
Interactive exhibits
This category is a little different from the rest: it's about creating
your own artwork.
Doodle
- Make a doodle, then have it revolved in space.
JacksonPollock.org
- Create your own digital Pollock-like masterpiece with no fumes or mess.
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