Did You Ever Visit A Museum Not Worth The Entrance Fee?

The Museum of Sex in Amsterdam. A stroll through certain districts is far more titillating and enlightening. The Torture Museum was worth the price of admission, though.

Versailles was closed when I went there, due to a 'tour guide strike'. We did get to see the gardens though.

patiodog

I can't remember, how often I passed the erotic museum in Amsterdam - but never went in there.

Don't bother. The only thing to be gleaned is that dildos were once made of stone.

stone

well um ahem

nevermind


I cant think of a museum that in some way didnt live up to its admission price, and those that were free, often surprised me

BTW:
Most of Britain's museum are free of charge!

[Actually I didn't go into that museum, since I was the organizer of a traveling exhibition on this subject here. :wink: ]

museums
Patiodog, stone age sex? I thought they used wooden clubs. I didn't know about the museum, thank goodness. Walking one evening with my wife in the red light district, a working girl sitting in her window gave me the usual smile. I turned to my wife, very carelessly, and suggested that I was the object of love at first sight. I survived.
Frankly, I've never paid so much for a museum entrance that I thought I wasn't getting my money's worth. I've never been to MOMA, can you believe it? I love the Chicago Art Institute museum, and would pay almost any amount for that show.

The Chicago Art Institute is first rate.

I was only to the door of MOMA, in 1969, when I took my mother to NY and Boston after my father died. They were just closing the doors for the night. Ggggggggg.

She was in beginning Alzheimer's, which was not a well known word then, and I ended up not seeing the Met, or MOMA. So I salivate to get back.

On the other hand, I have been alone in museums in Arezzo and Parma and Lucca, and almost alone in museums in Rome, not to mention the forum, where my ex and I were virtually alone in early morning March drizzle, and in many other singular places that aren't framed as museums.

There are museums of the mind, not mausoleums of, but framed places....

But yes, as to not worth it. I took a tour, with a friend who is an architectural historian and her husband, the urban architect, through the Neon Museum in Los Angeles, a tour that involved getting on an english double decker bus and going slowly past - very slowly past - some neon signs around LA including one of the museum owner/artist's. I would give the name, as I do remember it, but I don't want to totally unload on her.

Ok, I was raised there. I have family that was in the movie business in the early years. I am not totally hostile. I even like neon a lot, or did before that exposure.

Luckily my ex and I sat in the lower part of the bus so we didn't get all the exhaust fumes. The arch historian and hub sat on the top, where they did get the fumes. The speaker for the tour, the lady who ran the place took us to see her bank or whatever installation on Wilshire, which really, I wouldn't have minded seeing but it took about an hour....well, I was past snoring. I have not been on a tour since that one, and that was in, let me guess, 1985. Even though I have friends who do architectural tours. I do so hate to be trapped and ego wrapped. Lemme outta there.

The Alamo, San Antonio, Texas, USA.

It appears that they've gathered whatever was in various Daughters of the Confederacy's attics and put it on display. That's right, stuff that wasn't even from the Texas War of independence, Civil War stuff and even some things from WWI. Things that might have made some historical sense in some other organized forum, but here were the doors from Sam Houston's hacienda next to a Georgia Militia Battle Flag. What a mess.

We were there several years ago so maybe something's changed, but I doubt it. It's Texas.
Joe

We visited the Alamo over 14 years ago, so my memory of that visit is not too keen. All I remember about that visit was the restriction on taking photos inside the building. I cheated, and took a picture anyway. c.i.

Good C.I. I'm glad you got something out of it even if it was only a sneaked snapshot.

Joe, There are stupid rules, and there are more stupid rules. Heck, I've taken photos of Leonardo's Last Supper, and it was "allowed." Without flash, ofcoarse. c.i.

Picture worth a 1,000 words.

The only time I thought the anti-photo rule made sense was in a Paris museum of Fashion. The place had very low light to protect the fabrics, some of which were from the 1700's. (My wife is a designer. She kept reminding me that all those stitchs in all those hoop skirts were done completely by hand.) Anyway, the place was nearly dark and at each display was a sign saying No Pictures in ten languages. Just as our eyes were getting used to the dark, off goes a flash. There's a woman and her friend both carrying cameras the size of suitcases both looking puzzled and put out by the objections of the guard.

and yes, they were Americans.
and yes, they left in a huff.

Joe, That reminds me of our visit to Japan over twenty years ago. We were in a museum near Hiroshima, and I took a flash photo of a samurai uniform. I don't read Japanese, but after I was reprimanded by the attendant, I knew I was a stupid olf. In all my travels to foreign countries, the tour guide will tell us when it is okay or not okay to take photos. I still watch out for those signs that has a picture of a camera with a red circle and red line across the camera. That's "no photo" in any language. c.i.

I have gone to Italy three times, since I first lost my mind about it. The first time, in 1988, my ex and I spent a month wandering about, and I took lots of pictures everywhere, including, that time, in one of the very gold rooms of the Ducale palace (forbidden). But, then, I am not flashgirl. Mostly - they didn't care, if you didn't use flash.

Second time, it was a little trickier, it was 1993. People's cameras were more easily equipped with flash. I remember in particular in the museo in Arezzo, a tryptich or polyptich that bleated big announcements as you got within fifteen feet. My memory of that place was not of the art...although I like the whole town - of that particular museum, I remember the stairs, and I was out of film....

Third time, people who happened to land at say the museum in Siena, had to get organized in clumps and go through the place as a mass. I had seen it on the first trip, at long leisure. Luckily I was really overcome by revisiting some pics and started tearing and sniffling, and they let me by myself to take time and even go back and re-look, although watching me, lest I slash. Which of course is the correct procedure. Geez, I don't want those paintings slashed either.

I went to MOCA, in Mass.; and got so annoyed when I found myself staring at a room full of deflated soccer balls, after a gymnasium sized room with a green horizontal line, after a room with a narrow blackened tunnel in which one was to see Jesus at a barbecue grill.
I went to the entrance booth with my most confrontational NY accent and demanded my money back.
It was 3 weeks after watching the trade center fall; I was tense, but in retrospect right; even the Met is pay by choice, and the National Gallery is free. If i can see the only DaVinci oil for free; I'm not paying ten bucks to look at deflated soccer balls by some looser conceptual artist in Mass.