| Edification value |  |
|---|---|
| Entertainment value | |
| Should you go? | |
| Time spent | 88 minutes |
| Best thing I saw or learned | In 1997, Aldo Mancusi presided over a gala event honoring Enrico Caruso. In 2018, in the dining-room-turned-tiny-theater of the Caruso Museum, we watched selected bits on a (literal) videotape. It was downright weird to see then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani deliver a thoughtful, erudite, witty speech unveiling a proclamation in honor of Caruso and Aldo’s museum.And it made me wonder, what made late ’90s Giuliani transform into today’s Giuliani? They seem so different from one another. |
PERMANENTLY CLOSED. I’m sorry to say that Aldo Mancusi passed away in May of 2022. The website of Tamino Autographs has a lovely biography of him, although it sadly does not say what became of his collection. This was a very special museum, and I’m so glad that I got to meet Mr. Mancusi as part of my museum obsession. Maybe the Garibaldi-Meucci Museum in Staten Island could tack Caruso on to its honorees?
Of all the random museums I’ve visited during this project, the Enrico Caruso Museum is surely, surely the randomest. Sorry, Mossman Lock Collection, you’re now #2. The Caruso Museum has been on my list from the very start, but I’ve kind of been saving it. I understood that it was the project of an obsessive collector, an elderly Italian gent, who kept it in his apartment, which he opened to the public on Sundays by appointment.
That’s a little disconcerting, in the way that all obsessions–and obsessives–can be. “I’m gonna call you before I go in,” I joked to a friend. “If you don’t hear from me in an hour, alert the authorities!” Continue reading “Enrico Caruso Museum”
work. Abandoned as a school due to a fire in the pyromaniacal 1970s, the Clemente Soto Vélez Center was founded in 1993. It operates a number of endeavors in the building, including four theaters, artist studios, rehearsal spaces, two art galleries, and the aforementioned Escape the Room game.
What can I say about the Museum of Sex? It’s fun. The gift shop is hysterical — if you’re at all prone to blushing, it will make you blush. It’s immensely positive, and in a weird sort of way, innocent, maybe even willfully naive about its topic.
Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum offers visitors to its Times Square location a thoughtful meditation on the transience of celebrity — and its sometimes hefty toll — in the contemporary media maelstrom.
According to the guard at the front desk, in order to visit the museum at Hebrew Union College and the Jewish Institute of Religion, you must do four things.