| Edification value |  |
|---|---|
| Entertainment value |  |
| Should you go? | |
| Time spent | 23 minutes |
| Best thing I saw or learned | Occlupanids. That’s the word for those little plastic whatsits that keep the bags store-bought bread comes in closed. How many of those have you seen in your life? Used? Thrown out? Have you ever thought about them? And yet, each got made somewhere, and each serves a purpose. Mmuseumm devoted an exhibition in its tiny space to making me see these quotidian things for the first time. |
Of the institutions I’ve defined as “museums” for my purposes, New York’s largest (in area not breadth) is the 478-acre Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. I’ve now, at the eleventh hour of my museum-visiting project, visited the smallest museum in New York, the simply named if imaginatively spelled Mmuseumm. Located in a converted freight elevator down a narrow street just south of Canal Street in the non-neighborhood between Tribeca and Chinatown, I’ve seen walk-in closets larger than this quirky institution.
But what a density of eccentricity it achieves in its petite space!
Mmuseumm describes itself as devoted to now. “Now,” reads the Mmuseumm brochure, “is always weird.” It goes on to claim that the Neanderthals probably found their “now” weird, as did people in the Middle Ages. Mmuseumm dissects some of that weirdness, putting it on display in an analytical, humorous, thoughtful way.
Mmuseumm opens each spring with a new collection — of small exhibitions related to the weirdness of now. Last year was “season 7.” As it’s essentially outdoors, it makes sense that it shuts down over the colder months.
The Collection
How do I describe the Mmuseumm’s collection philosophy? I come back to my designated best thing: occlupanids. As I mentioned before, occlupanid is the fancy name for the plastic clip that holds a bread bag closed. Most of us, I wager, have never given them much thought, outside of checking if the rye on the shelf at Fairway is likely to still be good in a week. But occlupanids are a thing. You can organize them, analyze them, create a Holotypic Occlupanid Research Group (HORG) if you want to. It’s weird that these humble things are given a shelf in a museum. But no more weird than their existence in the first place.
Other exhibitions in the “Season 6, 2018” set included:
- A study of standard consumer objects that were somehow deformed – the brochure description for “Nothing is Perfect” starts out “Humanity exists in a state of eror.”
- Strange counterfeit brands that have sprung up in post-economic-collapse Venezuela.
- Unexpected common items that have saved lives, and ones that were causes of death.
- An array of devices people have deployed to fight snoring.
- The security patterns that get printed inside envelopes so you can’t see the checks in them.
In sum, the fall 2018 roster included a mind-boggling fourteen exhibitions. On a thoughts-provoked-per-square-meter basis, Mmuseumm’s little space is quite possibly the densest of any museum in New York.
Among the 150-ish objects on view at the Mmuseumm during my visit was a small shelf space labelled “Nothing.” I appreciate an institution that defies the standard museum philosophy of being full of stuff, in favor of devoting a space (especially one in such a small space to begin with) to emptiness.
Should You Visit the Mmuseumm?
This place confounded me. I was all set to be put off by its archness, its twee, self-satisfied cleverness. And to dismiss Mmuseumm as not really a museum. I did leave pondering whether I’d had a museum experience, or just seen a clever piece of conceptual art, a wry commentary on museum-ology, quite possibly the first meta-museum I’ve visited.
Meta- or not, though, Mmuseumm is a museum. It tries to edify and entertain, and whether it is actually earnest or not, it comes across as on the level. In collecting ephemera, it reminds me of City Reliquery, though with a broader mandate and a much smaller space. I spoke a bit with the docent who was standing by to answer questions (there is also a phone-based audioguide and an awesome, exhaustive brochure), and she was super enthused about the place and its mission.
Also, two-or-so doors down the alley from the Mmuseumm is the even tinier Mmuseumm Rest Stop. I wouldn’t do my Christmas shopping there, but it featured funny and well-curated gifts, souvenirs, and snacks in counterpoint to the items on display.
I strongly recommend a visit to the Mmuseumm, particularly after you’ve been to many (like a couple hundred) more conventional museums. It encapsulates much of what I’ve come to think about what makes a good museum, and a meaningful museumgoing experience.
For Reference:
| Address | 4 Cortlandt Alley, Manhattan |
|---|---|
| Website | mmuseumm.com |
| Cost | General Admission: $5 donation suggested |
| Other Relevant Links |
This is a necessarily incomplete review. Visiting a “farm museum” in midwinter is not a recipe for seeing the place at its best, busiest, or most inviting. Indeed, I’m not sure why the Queens County Farm Museum doesn’t just shut down from December til March. But it was open and it’s on my list. So I gathered an intrepid friend and we trooped out to the far eastern fringes of Queens, where New York City blurs into Nassau County, to get the lay of the land.
I’m sure that in more clement seasons the 40+ acres of grounds are verdant and bucolic. This time of year, not so much.
It’s a unique hybrid of art deco and Egyptian Revival, complete with an awesome, streamlined, funeral barge.
I feel like I’m on thin ice with this one. There’s a fairly strong argument to be made that cemeteries are not museums. Start with the fact that they are called “cemeteries” and not “museums.” But bear with me here.
Both New Yorkers and non-New Yorkers alike tend to think of the Bronx as entirely, unremittingly gray: paved urban overdevelopment at its very worst. In reality, the Bronx features large expanses of green.
The South Street Seaport Museum just celebrated its 50th anniversary, and its establishment contributed to the survival of a collection of historic buildings in the face of Lower Manhattan’s relentless pressure for development. The museum includes a print shop (worth visiting; great cards), the museum building proper, and the “street of ships,” a collection of historic vessels, several of which are open for tours when the museum is open.
I’m going with the crowd on this one, but I’m picking the Unicorn Tapestries. I just love them — the allegory, the sheer beauty, the amount of work that went into making them (and any tapestry really). I love the mystery to them — we don’t know exactly who the “A” & “E” were for whom they were made. The unicorn has a rough time of it, but they fill me with joy, and I see new things in them every time I visit. Also don’t overlook the narwhal horn tucked in the corner of the room where they reside.
This is a milestone post, my fiftieth museum review. So I decided to treat myself to my very favorite of all New York museums, The Cloisters. But now that I’ve started, I realize, what can I say about The Cloisters? I feel overmatched and inadequate. The Cloisters isn’t just my favorite museum, it’s quite possibly my favorite place. It’s so unlikely, it’s like magic or a miracle happened in this park at the far northern tip of Manhattan. But as with so many of the miracles in New York City, it was money not magic that made The Cloisters happen. 
The BBG’s amazing tulip collection was going full-force the day I visited. This time of year always makes me think that the Dutch 17th century tulip-mania wasn’t entirely irrational.
The Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) is one of the two great arboretums (arboreta?) in the city. It’s sibling/rival is the New York Botanic Garden in the Bronx, and there are a number of other botanic gardens of note, to say nothing of the great parks. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden is also a bit problematic for me: it was on the original list of all the museums in NYC, and even back in February I can remember thinking, “but is a botanic garden really a kind of museum?”
At best the answer is “sort of.” I think of botanic gardens as zoos for plants, more than museums of plants. What’s the difference? A zoo and a museum can both be places of edification and entertainment. But I had trouble ranking BBG on the scale I’m using for this project–it didn’t turn out well, not because it’s a bad place, but because the museum yardstick doesn’t really work for it.
The annual Sakura Matsuri, or Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival, is a bonkers mix of cosplay and traditional dance and music. Packed with people but worth it.
Of course the garden is educational and beautiful. 