It might be commonly said that we ‘acquire’ knowledge, ‘acquire’ a smartphone, or ‘acquire’ a verruca – in less common parlance is the word ‘deacquire’. It’s traditionally used though, for reasons that are not altogether clear, when referring to museums and their collections. In the same way as a museum might, for example, ‘acquire’ The […]
Tag: museum
A Bulgarian Museum Savoring of the Ig Nobel Prize
The Bulgarian National Museum of Natural History podcast takes a long, loving look at many of the past Ig Nobel Prize winners.
The Vagina Museum is Looking for Donations
“Welcome to the project to create the world’s first bricks and mortar museum dedicated to vaginas, vulvas and the gynaecological anatomy,” says the web site of The Vagina Museum, which goes on to say: Donate here to help us open our first premises in Camden Market.” Camden Market is in London, which is in the […]
The Ig Nobel Japan Tour — September 20-28
Please join us for any or all of the Ig Nobel events in Japan: Ig Nobel Japan Tour September 20, Thursday—Nerd Nite Tokyo, Nagatacho GRID, Tokyo, Japan.— A very jet-lagged Marc Abrahams will discuss the Ig Nobel Prizes. September 21, Friday— Special Pre-Show Press Opening of the Ig Nobel Exhibition—AaMo Gallery at the Tokyo Dome, Tokyo, Japan. —Marc Abrahams and several Ig Nobel Prize […]
The Museum of Menstruation
If you are, or ever have been, or ever might be involved with human reproduction, you will probably learn interesting things by visiting the Museum of Menstruation. The museum currently exists online, and is looking for a physical home in or near New York City, a metropolis in which human reproduction is believed to occur […]
Alwynne B. Beaudoin’s compost of dung research
Alwynne B. Beaudoin’s “The Dung File” is one of the more effusive collections of research about dung. Beaudoin says: “The Dung File consists of a list of references dealing with pollen, parasites, and plant remains in coprolites and latrine fills from archaeological and palaeoenvironmental sites. The focus is on studies in North America, although the […]
Dr. Nakamats, still very much alive, to have 88th birthday party, in NYC
The very much one-and-only Dr. Nakamats, who among his many other accomplishments (2) is an Ig Nobel Prize winner and (1) has outmaneuvered doctors’ predictions that he would die in 2015, will enliven his 88th birthday party by traveling to it. If you will be in New York City on Friday evening, September 23 (the […]
The Museum of Sex’s curator has written a book
Sarah Forbes has written a book about her experiences as curator of The Museum of Sex. We have enjoyed our experiences collaborating with the curator, on the case of the homosexual necrophiliac duck, on the case of the Blonsky device for using centrifugal force to assist women in giving birth, and on other endeavors. Forbes’s book is […]
Weight-lifting enhances museum exhibit appreciation (study)
Attn. museum curators! If you were to ask your visitors to lift heavy weights whilst looking at exhibits, would their esthetic pleasure and appreciative comprehension increase? A recent study, published in frontiers in Psychology suggests that ‘Weight lifting can facilitate appreciative comprehension for museum exhibits’. A research team from Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan, asked 42 […]
Fictophones – a curiously unstable class of musical instruments?
Does this video, showing sound sculptor Henry Dagg performing ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’ on a Faux-Katzenklavier of his own construction, qualify as a fictophonic collapse scenario? First, some background. Musicologists often like to categorise instruments into classes or groups. For example – idiophones (vibrating bodies), membranophones (vibrating membranes), chordophones (vibrating strings), aerophones (vibrating […]