Eric Siegel asks for memories of intentionally funny museums and
exhibits.
 
Some years ago in San Francisco (my best guess would be mid-1970's)
the DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park had a one-man show called
"The Museum of Unnatural History."  The artist had made huge
ceramic bones and other "natural history" objects, and mounted them
with pseudo-scholarly labels.  The staff of the California Academy
of Sciences, which *is* a natural history museum and is right
across the band concourse from the DeYoung, all thought it was
hilarious.  I visited it several times.  I suspect the "Museum of
Jurassic Technology" in Los Angeles is similar.
 
My favorite fictional humorous museum was created in a series of
"Lum and Abner" radio broadcasts originally aired in the 1940's.
(No, I'm not *that* old -- WAMU broadcasts "vintage radio" four
hours every Sunday night.)  The old fellows had received a chest
of very spurious "buried treasure" and decided to open a museum
to display it.  Since the treasure consisted of things like
dented pots, old clothes and a stuffed owl, they had to be creative
with their label text.  Abner, ever the practical one, would
write labels like "A ROCK" and "A OWL".  Lum revised the labels
to include impressive provenance data, such as, "This valuable
owl belonged to a old-time king...."
 
Still chuckling....
 
       +------------------------------+------------------------+
       |  Barbara Weitbrecht          |  [log in to unmask]  |
       |  National Air & Space Museum |  [log in to unmask]       |
       |  Smithsonian Institution     |  (202) 357-4162        |
       +------------------------------+------------------------+