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Upcoming Events!
Pariah Beat this Saturday!
Come see Pariah Beat and their friends Amity Front this Saturday!
For our full schedule of Upcoming Events Click Here!
They're Blogging About Us!
People are saying all kinds of nice things about us online. A visitor in early January was impressed with the "very dark" Museum. He's been described as “a wild savant bulldog…what with all the brilliant creative designs, the drooling, the tireless scratching and leg humping." Nice. He's even got a collection of screen captured "Monitor-fuckups" that is both fascinating, ugly, beautiful and, of course, right up our alley! Read Srwild's blog here!
Probably due to its sub-standard lighting system, there are no pictures on Mr. Wild's blog, but his friend, Undeadmolly did take some pics over the summer, as well as the slime mold in the park opposite our Bridge Street Headquarters. Recent discoveries about slime mold indicates that these Floral/Faunal organisms can complete simple tasks like T mazes and the duties of the average county elections supervisor. It makes us wonder, why didnt we make a regional sample of the mold, when it was readily available? Just wait till next summer...I feel a special exhibit coming on.
We admire her pithy, personal writing very much. We hope she comes back with or without her face mask! Read Undeadmolly here!
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 People Particularly 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.
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.â —Joe Citro, Weird New England, 2004
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
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 conceptsâcreated 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, âPost-Modernism is Killing Us!â caps, Genuine silt specimens from the 1927 flood, the super-cute, Japanese âHumping Dogâ (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 wonât 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...!
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.
Parking Harassment—Special Note: The Museum again must apologize for a local man Bob Pickering who harasses visitors parking here at the Museum. He wears a baseball style cap, or other hat, and is sometimes followed closely by his partner Elizabeth who carries a tiny dog. The museum has filed "Notice Against Trespass" papers against Mr. Pickering. Please alert museum staff if they are seen on museum property, or if they approach museum patrons. The museum takes no responsibility for their actions. Daniel Johnson, property owner of the former "ProCam" building employs this man and thus is responsible for Mr. Pickerings actions. You can report the actions of Mr. Pickering directly to Mr. Johnson at design-build@valley.net, or 802-291-7080.
Parking for Museum patrons is available by the Museum Riverside in the back of the Museum Building, on the street (Railroad Row works!) or in the Courthouse/Depot Parking lot or—if you wish—in front of the former ProCam building. (We think.)
The Main Street Museum, 58 Bridge Street, White River Junction, Vermont, 05001-1909, info@mainstreetmuseum.org, 802.356.2776
