a love letter to my favourite museums 🫶🫶🫶🫶

(and hate mail for the ones that haunt my nightmares)

I recently caught up with historian Christeah aka professorpeachez and we had a fabulous // informative chat about what we think makes a good museum which you can watch HERE:

What makes a "good" museum? Feat. Cosi's Odyssey

We cover a whole bunch of topics, from accessibility, lighting, the importance of a tasty treat at the end (it’s like a reward 🍬), conservation and conflict and so much MORE.

Our discussion got me thinking about the best and worst of my own experiences with the piles of museums I’ve been fortunate enough to waddle around so I’ve decided to do a yearbook-style round-up (best hair, most likely to go to jail etc.) of some of the standouts. In no particular order:

BEST BUMS: THAT ONE ROOM IN THE MET (New York City, USA)

Thanks to google I now know that the room I am thinking of is the Leon Levy and Shelby White Court. And it houses the best collection of bums I have ever seen.

(Re top right) imagine having such a goddamn WAGON you need a literal support post????

MOST LIKE THE INSIDE OF MY BRAIN: SIR JOHN SOANE’S MUSEUM (London, UK)

My ideal living situation would be, in the words of my partner, a maximalist hellscape. Sir John Soane’s Museum is that hellscape.

This incredible museum houses the collection of Sir John Soane (no points if you guessed that), a famous english architect who lived and worked two centuries ago, and it is just chock-a-block, absolutely BRIMMING with the most varied array of art and artefacts (and yes, he was also a classics nerd, so I felt absurdly at home). I walked into this museum and actually felt physical relief.

If you’re visiting/living in London and you’re after a cultural moment that is less of a tourist trap I really cannot recommend this museum enough.

BEST IN SHOW: MUSEO LARCO (Lima, Peru)

I go into way more detail during my chat with Christeah (which you can watch HERE, in case you missed my plug a paragraph ago: What makes a "good" museum? Feat. Cosi's Odyssey) but this is my all time all TIME favourite museum that I have ever visited. Yes, even including the Acropolis Museum.

Skip ahead to 23.31 and I’ll tell you all about it. For now, enjoy some choice pics from their erotic gallery (why doesn’t every museum have one of these???).

BIGGEST TEAR-JERKER: THE LOUVRE (Paris, France)

To the surprise of absolutely no-one, I have wept/quietly wailed in several museums in my time BUT one of the most emotional experiences I’ve ever had was at the Louvre when I was 20. This was at the very start of the whole Cosi’s Odyssey situation, I’d studied a bit of ancient history in the first few years of my undergrad and I’d been lucky enough to be part of an archaeological dig in Italy a few years earlier but I was by no means as involved and/or invested in archaeology, history, and museum spaces as I am now. I was in Paris with my sister, we’d been hitting the cultural stuff pretty hard so she decided to give the Louvre a miss (only to return 6 years later and send me about 600 photos because she had such a fabulous time), so I ended up with about 3 hours to explore the Louvre on my own. I don’t think I’ve ever power-walked so aggressively in my entire life. I swear I broke out into a light gallop at a few points. I knew there was no way I could actually just explore the museum, floating around like a leaf in the wind, so I googled the top 10 things to see in the Louvre, zeroed in on the classical pieces and just zipped through. Of course I have no sense of direction and it is an absurdly labyrinthine museum so you can imagine how these various missions went: I rounded a corner and BAM there was the Venus de Milo, I popped out of some random end room and said hello to Psyche as she was Revived by the Kiss of Eros.

But THEN something wild and wonderful started happening, something I’d never experienced in a museum before or any kind of building really. I started feeling this sort of magnetic pull (I know this sounds absurd but I swear to you this is how it felt) that was drawing me towards the end of this long, particularly gorgeous hallway. I remember I started smiling to myself because I just had a feeling about what I was about to see (there was really only one thing left on my list that I was desperate to see), and sure enough, after walking all the way through this massive hallway, ignoring everything to the left and right of me, the Nike of Samothrace revealed herself in the MOST dramatic fashion and I promptly burst into tears. It was that incredible cocktail of architecture, lighting, museum layout and personal connection which created such a memorable emotional response (me blubbing in the corner).

Here’s a little ~ detail ~ pic because honestly no photo does her justice and if you haven’t seen her in person I don’t want to spoil it!!

MOST LIKELY TO YELL AT YOU: CAPITOLINE MUSEUMS (Rome, Italy)

I am forced to acknowledge that this may NOT, in fact, be a universal experience BUT my dear friend managed to capture the exact moment I got yelled at so that in and of itself makes me want to tell the tale.

It was during my first EVER visit to Rome, back in December of 2018, and I was completely beside myself with how in love with the city I was. We only had three days there so we were hitting the sites pretty hard - the Capitoline Museums were the first museums we visited and I didn’t really know what I was walking into so when I SAW the massive naked guy lying across the fountain I flipped out. I had no idea who he was supposed to be, no shred of historical or archaeological context, but I was just so excited to RECOGNISE something and to be seeing it IN person IN Rome. Unfortunately for my friend, Cosi’s Odyssey was up and running by this point, so she was roped into content creation. I envisage the ideal photo, me sitting oh-so-casually on the edge of the fountain (I’d say my poses have gotten more creative with time but that would be a lie), but it was made VERY clear to me VERY quickly (and in Italian??) that you are absolutely NOT allowed to sit anywhere NEAR the edge of the fountain (or ON the massive naked guy for that matter but this part did seem more obvious).

Here is the actual moment where I am getting yelled at. The immediacy of the yelling makes me feel a smidge better as it must happen a lot??? Looking at this photo, with the benefits of old age, I can see a hell of a lot of restoration has been done to the fountain so I absolutely should not have been sitting on it but ALAS we live and learn - I felt so guilty and blushed for the next thirty minutes so please rest assured this will never happen again.

MOST LIKELY TO HIT ON YOU: 2-WAY-TIE BETWEEN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF EGYPTIAN CIVILISATION (Cairo, Egypt) AND THE ALTES MUSEUM (Berlin, Germany)

Now one time this happened makes a hell of a lot more sense than the other time so let’s start with the less-unhinged time. I was in Berlin because Charlie and I were putting on The Füde Experience: Muse/Museums (if you’re Europe-based and have been considering attending one of these experiences Charlie is coming BACK to Europe and we’re planning naked dinners in London, Paris and Greece so message me if you want to be kept in the loop/keep reading these newsletters 👀) and I just wanted to nip to the Altes Museum because there is this UNREAL pot there which I actually commissioned into a few sets of earrings because I love it so much. I’m literally wearing socks with the image on them as I write this.

Point BEING I’d flung on some lipstick and there were giant dildos hanging from my ears so getting hit on in this particular moment was significantly less jarring than the other time it happened which was at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation in Cairo, specifically THE ROOM WITH ALL THE MUMMIES. If you haven’t been, the mummies are all kept in a separate/dark/underground section which is somehow even less erotic than it sounds so you can understand my SURPRISE when the museum security guard started complimenting me and asking for my number. I cannot count how many desiccated corpses I was making eye contact with at any given time and this man was trying to crack on??????? I’m not trying to kink-shame but I thought we all agreed to draw the line at necrophilia???

BEST GEOGRAPHICAL EMBEDDING (ALSO BEST LIGHTING): THE ACROPOLIS MUSEUM (Athens, Greece)

Now you may have no idea what the heck I mean by geographical embedding (honestly I don’t really know either, I think I’ve literally just thrown some words together and am now pretending it’s an established phrase when it absolutely isn’t) BUT what I’m trying to get at is the way in which particular museums work with (or, in some cases, completely ignore) their geographical context. Now I’m not a big geography gal - I’ve read ONE book about geology in my entire life that I would recommend (here’s a link: Origins: How the Earth Shaped Human History) and I’m not sure it even counts as it’s about the historical side of things - BUT, when it comes to museums, I didn’t realise how important geographical context is and how much it can enhance visitor experience until I rolled up to the Acropolis Museum. Now let me be CLEAR, I am very aware the Acropolis Museum is a unique example in that it is a museum all about a particular heritage site rather than a giant encyclopaedic moment like the Louvre or the Met, but the way the layout of the museum mirrors the layout of the Acropolis itself and the gigantic panes of glass that look out ONTO the Acropolis are just spectacular. The design of this museum is just masterful. I may devote an entire newsletter to my enamoured screeching at a later date.

THE MOST HUMBLING/HAUNTING: THE VATICAN MUSEUMS (Vatican City)

The Laocoön lives here, so I will have to return, regardless of how haunted I am by my past behaviour.

Choices were made.

xxx

I’d absolutely love to hear about your wild and whacky museum experiences so please leave a comment or shoot me an email 🤍🤍