The Museum of Everything

I’ve enjoyed every museum I’ve visited. There’s something special about places created by knowledgeable enthusiasts. I’ve visited a museum of fire engines, museums of small town history, and even one about lawn mowers, I had no real interest in any of these things, but I’ve come away from each happier and wiser. If someone likes their subject well enough to set up a museum in it’s honour there is always reason to try to see what they find so fascinating. I’ve come to prefer small museums about unlikely subjects, because I like the puzzle of seeing what could possibly be interesting about such things as fans, marbles, or dog collars.

So my invention for the day is a Museum of Everything. A museum for people to display the things they care about, with a card beside a glass case telling the world why it is a special thing.

I also like the idea of an online version of this museum. Perhaps there the exhibits could change daily, submitted by it’s visitors? Or maybe each day the museum would display a set number of things and perhaps you could choose an exhibit you liked and swap it for one of your own? So you could add a picture of a special place, and if someone liked that they could submit a picture of a favourite shell found on a beach, and you would see this link from one to another, and feel connected to that other museum curator. And as a museum visitor you might like to see the history of an exhibit, how one thing meant something to someone else.

Or maybe I should open a specialist museum of my own, to celebrate my own  interests and enthusiasms? I love stickers, I think a museum of stickers would be fun. I also love pebbles on the beach, so perhaps I could open a museum of pebbles in my seaside home town. It would be different from the beach itself, although I haven’t figured out quite how yet.