An offhand remark I made in my review of the The Statue of Liberty Museum got me thinking about emoji and museums and museum emoji. I have mixed feelings about emoji, especially as the character set nears hanzi/kanji numbers. They’re complex, and just as open to misinterpretation as any form of communication. Sometimes an eggplant is just an eggplant. On the other hand, adding a visual component to dry text communication can enrich it. And they’re fun.
Anyway, I started pondering what some of my favorite New York City museums would be called in emoji. And I decided, why not make a game of it? Here’s some museums rendered emojically. Most are pretty famous, though a couple are obscure.
See how many you can decode! 🤔🏆
Emoji Museums
Hover or tap on the blocked out spaces to reveal the answers, or click/tap on the emoji to go to my review.
| 🗽🏛 | The Statue of Liberty Museum |
| 🖼🖼🖼🖼🗿🗿🗿🗿🌏🥇🏛 | The Met |
| 🦁📚📚📚🦁 | New York Public Library |
| 🦄🏰🖼🏛 | The Cloisters |
| 👴🏻🎩💰💰💰🏠🖼🏛 | The Frick Collection |
| 👴🏻🎩💰💰💰💰📚📚🖼🏛 | The Morgan Library |
| 🐖➕🤒➕🏋➡🔟💵🇺🇸🏠 | Hamilton Grange. This was hard; I went with ham+ill+ton plus the $10 bill. |
| ♻➕🌳🌳🌳⚰💀 | Green-Wood Cemetery. There should be a gravestone emoji! |
| 🏛🔞🍆🍑💦 | Museum of Sex |
| 🇺🇸🏛🐋🐘🌖☄🔭🌎🌳🌿💎🔬 | American Museum of Natural History |
| 🛳⛴🚢⚓🏭🏛 | Maritime Industry Museum |
| ⛪😇✍📖🌍🔚👼 | Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. Only works if you know he wrote the Book of Revelation. |
| 🏛🏙🍎🚕🚇🐀 | Museum of the City of New York |
| 🏛👘➡👗🚂➡🚅☎➡📱🖼 | Museum of Modern Art. It’s ironic given that emoji are officially part of MoMA’s collection, but I had the hardest time coming up with a way to represent “modern.” |
| 👵🏻💰💰💰🏛🇺🇸🖼 | Whitney Museum of American Art. I got nothing for “Whitney” But museum of American art should suffice. |
Clearly I could do this all day. But I won’t.