Main Page

The main exhibition space and research areas of the Museum as they appeared in 2007.

Come enjoy the marionette artistry of Ria Blaas and Gabriel Q., in "The Christmas Story," showing Dec. 19-21, Learn Less!

Upcoming Events!

"The Christmas Story"

Marionette Shows Performance Schedule:

• Friday, 19 December: 7pm

• Saturday, 20 December: The Christmas Story. again. at 4, 7 pm and at a special show at 10 pm (see how the "X" got in "Xmas"!)

• Sunday, 21 December: the christmas story. yet again, for your convenience at 4 pm

Rent the Museum for a partyâwith a show! Call or email for group rates! info@mainstreetmuseum.org 802.356.2776

• Note: museum closed for holidays, Monday, 22 December, 2008 through Friday, 2 January, 2009

For our full schedule of Upcoming Events Click Here!

The exterior of our Fire Station Building during the holidays.

Catawiki

The Main Street Museum's Catawiki is a unique digital initiative in material culture studies utilizing open-source code to describe the artifacts in our collections and to create a completely fluid, adaptive taxonomic structure for their interpretation. The Catawiki uses the same "wiki" code utilized by "Wikipedia" and is able to be modified by users from any internet access point. The categories currently acting as a organizational foundation for these structures are:

• Objects as Evidence of Human Culture, for instance: Pet Toys; Geographically or Historically Significant Items (Relics); Manuscripts; Art; Military History; Textiles and Clothing; Shoes; and "Things, or Fragments of Things Once Owned by, or Associated with, Notable PeopleâParticularly Notable Vermonters".
• Biology: Living, or Apparently Once Living, Objects, including
  • Flora: "The Invasive and Native Species of Windsor County" for instance, or "Dried Roses from Robert Todd Lincolns House in Manchester, Vermont" and "Roses from the Varina Davis Memorial in Vicksburg, Mississippi".
  • Fauna includes: Homo-sapiens; White-tailed Deer and Other Mammalia; Reptiles; Birds; Entomology (Insects); Corals; Flocked Pets; Other, or Unidentified Species; etc.
• Inanimate, or Apparently Inanimate Objects, or Boxes of Rocks including Minerals, Man-made Minerals, Silt from the 1927 Flood, Round and/or Rusted Things.
• And, of course, Miscellaneous or Other Things.
• Vinculum (or Overlapping) Categories can be accessed from the sidebar to the left and include: Carbon; Color as a Hysterical Reaction; Cute Things; Flocking; Objects Chewed by Pets; Teeth, More Teeth, Things with Nail-holes; "Things Made from Animals or Parts of Animals" and Tramps and Hobos.

Our latest book is all about our collections. And is full of pictures! Buy it Here!

Publicity and Press Clippings

Read what we write about ourselves. Read what others write about us.

Testimonials

The Main Street MuseumâWhite River Junction'€™s answer to the Library of Congress.
—Peter Welch, U. S. House of Representatives, 2007.

It is only due to organizations such as yours that the important works of our Country are brought to the attention of the public.
—€Marie Reilly, Museum of Bad Art, Dedham, 1998. learn less...!

The Main Street Museum forces one to contemplate the nature of museums and curating. Why do we save what we save? How do we decide what to discard, what to display, what to hide away, and what to destroy.” —Joe Citro, Weird New England, 2004

The Museum as depicted by Koren in 1996.

Material Culture Studies, Including The Electric Organ

Read what we've written about objects. Read what the experts have said as well. This is just a starting point. We have only just begun to really think about things, and our relationships to things.

Our fully functioning blog features discursions on material culture studies, miscellanea and much more! Museumology Blog continues the heartfelt commentary of the previous blog of the Main Street Museum at Blogspot. You can read the latest entries, musing about roadtrips, history, collections and collective insanity, and post your own responses here.

A German critic, W. Bürger, writes "Our Museums...are veritable graveyard-yards in which have been heaped up, with a tumulour-like promiscuousness, the remains which have been carried thither...all are hung pell-mell upon the walls of some noncommittal gallery a kind of posthumous asylum, where a people, no longer capable of producing...come to admire this magnificent gallery of debris. —G. Brown Goode, Museums of the Future, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C., 1891: p. 427

History is false. It has to be. —Jules David Prown

What is he thinking about, right now?

Shoppe with Us! The Museum Gifte Shoppe

The Museum Gift Shoppe features souvenirs, a wide variety of books on museums and museum-y things, our own booklets with hand-stitched bindings, and wonky gifts that no one in their right mind would purchase!

Main Street Rummage; The Thrift Store!

What's concentrated at our Rummage? Chic-ness... Hip-ness... New ideas and concepts—created from recycled things... Nowadays its Thrift Stores! They just make sense! And think about it. Dont you need shirts, Pants, Suits, Blouses, Shoes, Jackets, A small assortment of housewares and books Clean, cut and bagged rags at affordable prices (use them over and over they're cheaper then paper towels!) and selected items from the Main Street Museum'€™s unusual Museum Gift Shoppe: Latte mugs, White River Junction t-shirts, “Post-Modernism is Killing Us!” caps, Genuine silt specimens from the 1927 flood, the super-cute, Japanese “Humping Dog” (must be seen to be believed)

Clothes, Great Gifts! O My! Where will you ever see anything like it? This is true locally-controlled, resourceful retail. We are wide awake. You won’t find us napping. And we promise you will get your money's worth at our stores—”the best looking Thrift Stores youll ever see! All proceeds help the Museum succeed in the 21st century; but best of all, its a Fun Place to Shop! learn less...!

Volunteer at the Museum

Links

Other Museum-things.

"As in totemism, we participate in each other as we participate in the object." —Sartre, Les jeux sont faits, 1943, and Norman O. Brown, Love's Body, 1966.

Kevin Huizenga's illustration of the fire station building.

See the pretty clouds! Time lapse movie of the MSM building by Aloofdork.

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Special Note

The Museum again must apologize for a local man, Bob Pickering. He wears a baseball style cap, is followed closely by his partner Elizabeth. Please these alert Museum staff immediately if these individuals are seen on Museum property or approach Museum patrons. The Museum has filed "no trespassing" papers against them and takes no responsibility for their actions. (you can park by the Museum riverside or on the street, Railroad Row works!...everything's fine!)

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The Main Street Museum, 58 Bridge Street, White River Junction, Vermont, 05001-1909, info@mainstreetmuseum.org, 802.356.2776

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