A Question Y’all Are Invited to Answer (More than Once, Even!)

Booze? :D

Probably aviation -- particularly classic airplanes -- if I had to focus on one thing.

If I were obscenely rich and could just have a huge sprawling campus full of collections, though, it would be pretty eclectic... Booze (with a full-service bar, o'course, divided into sections: speakeasy, tiki bar, saloon, etc.), aviation (with a full-service airfield, and different hangers for classic airplanes, warbirds, rotary-wing, LTA), classic cars and motorcycles, weaponry (with a shooting range), nautical/maritime history, frontier history (American West, Australia, S. America, Africa).

All surrounding an enormous library. The kind of library that would make the LOC weep with envy.

I have too many interests/hobbies... I will die poor.

This is an easy one for me. You know that I am a bibliophile. My museum would be dedicated to the printed word. It would feature printing presses, typefaces, bookbinding, even paper! I think that the invention of the printed word is the most important human invention since the discovery of fire. In addition to the exhibits, I would have classes in bookbinding and printing.

I'd create a museum of treasure where I'd put treasures and stories about them. Wouldn't that be beautiful? To see a bowl of sand and read that it was collected, say, in Mongolia in these or other circumstances. or a bird feather from the Amazon jungle, a feather stolen from a bird of paradise performing a mating dance during someone's honeymoon trip. Or a bunch of lab paraphernalia from my grandmother's basement in a house that once belonged to the German family Richter evicted to go back to Germany after WWII. Or leaves from the plum and cherry trees in the orchard, the only visible proof of a homestead once in a meadow, now overgrown with grass and weeds where my grandmother was born and later repartriated to the West of Poland, the house of family Richter,
or maybe I'd put that beautiful shell found on a beach, witness to the only summer crush I ever had

You know I could go on and on about these things
A museum would be just the place, the memory keeper.

Garden accoutrements, both modern and old-fashioned: whimsical figures and statues, pots, barrels, buckets and pumps, birdbaths, windchimes, sundials and tools, plus wheelbarrows, path stones, stone seats and tables, and whatever else may be found or placed throughout a property... with miniature scenes incorporating patios, arbors, outdoor fireplaces, gazebos, and water features set up and scattered throughout the museum.

I love ‘living outdoors’ – and augmenting wild Mother Nature with the use of *judicious* landscaping allows this to happen.

I'd go visit the others museums, for sure. As for myself, I'd like and interactive food and drinks museum. Something to showcase foods and drinks from around the globe. On staff chefs and cooks would prepare and serve food and drink samples to serve to the patrons. I'd need a complex as big as the entire Smithsonian complex, maybe bigger to do the concept justice. Exhibits would change on a weekly or monthly basis and I would have to sample everything prior to exhibiting.

I'm going to have to go with live music which is kind of funny given that we're talking about museums. However, there is something wonderfully gripping about live music which I am finding missing from some of my favorite musicians' studio-produced work. I would love to have a museum where all sorts of live video and audio recordings are archived and show-cased and accessible both in listening areas and on the web. The listening areas would be better than just a chair and a pair of headphones- maybe small boothlike rooms where you and a few of your friends can immerse yourself in the sound and sight of what you choose to experience. There would, of course, have to be a coffee shop and club or two for live performances. And during live performances, I think we would have to do some whackass shit like handing out paper and fingerpaints to the audience and have a clothesline strung around the room so people could put up their art during the show- something that kind of invites the audience to have a more interactive experience.

Well....I'd go fo first editions of SF books (I did manage to pick up a first UK book club ed of 'I Robot' recently) , all the 'pulp era' and later SF mags, movie props, posters...ah...I can see it now!

But where to start? Poe or Verne? Stuff it! Sunni said no budget problems, so I'll include both :-)

I enjoy museums - some anyways - and I find it hard to put my finger on any one topic or even theme for a personal museum. I would surely visit Kirsten's museum even as I gather memories for it as often as possible. I'm most interesting in visiting Polka's museum, though, which would surely incorporate a little of everybody's relics. I would add a wing where my memories could be relived by anybody from my point of view. Some rooms of this exhibit would be open by invitation only, for my closest confidants. I would love to walk through similar exhibits for everyone else as well. I think that would go great with the physical treasures.

was inspired by remembering Ken Burns’ Civil War series on PBS and the Ellis Island museum (which I have not yet seen, only read about). In addition to focusing on the ostensible heroes of the war, letters from soldiers to their families were also presented. In many respects, they captured a better context for understanding the war than all the generals’ and other leaders’ blather.

Thus, my museum would focus on capturing the daily life of “ordinary” individuals—because it is from these individuals (and often in spite of state or other interference) that great things originate. The pioneers who went west, often to get away from state and/or private busybody interference ... the individuals of today who strive to avoid the coercive, collectivist systems that seem geared to destroy individual integrity and possibilities for genuine happiness ... the tinkerers and poets and musicians who may never become well known, but whose ideas surely benefit others or contribute to pleasure ... I guess this museum would be a paean to the indomitable human spirit. What a surprise, eh?

I think that if I was going to create a museum, I'd do up a "before, during and after" one. I'd showcase art from deceased artists, and each artist's display would include something he created before he tackled art as his serious life passion, preferably the first piece of art he ever created; one piece from the height of his career; and the last, completed project before his death.

I'd display paintings, kinetic art, sketches, sculptures, glass blowing, mosaics, lithography, wood carving, pottery, collages.... the possibilities are almost endless. The the only requirement to be displayed would be that the artist's work is a threefold collection of "before, during and after." It wouldn't matter if the artist was "famous." It would highlight art for art's sake and the celebrate the way an artist morphs as she explores her craft(s).

My museum would be dedicated to wellness and healing.

With no money problems, I suspect my idea would grow into a very large university with, perhaps, the museum as a small part of it. The museum would preserve and showcase the methods and accomplishments of the past, of course, and the university would strive to build on that knowledge and those accomplishments, as well as to discover ever new ways to do and be completely healthy and human.