While I was consulting to Mystic Seaport, the Museum of America and the Sea, they received an unsolicited offer of a complete human skin from a sailor. It was his wish on his death that his fully tattooed skin be gifted to the museum.... Needless to say, it was not accepted.At both the Barnum Museum and Circus World Museum we were also familiar with a wide variety of unusual donations from animal oddities to interesting relics. However one that I particularly enjoyed because of its scale, yet not particularly weird, was the donation and acceptance of eighteen full-scale railroad flatcars, delivered to the museum's railroad yard. The donor even had each car mechanically rebuilt and painted at a facility in Illinois. It's not every day you get a donation that is over 1,600 feet long...
Sent from my shiny iPad2 computermabob.This was not donated to my institution but to a local historical society that I am familiar with. It arrived years ago and would not be accepted today. The donation: the removed cataracts of the person who founded the historical society. I kid you not! Insisted on seeing them myself in order to believe them. Well, you know what they say, once seen you cannot unsee.....
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2013 14:43:45 -0500
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MUSEUM-L] Weird Donations
To: [log in to unmask]
I worked for the YWCA OKC and, while it's not a museum, I had to share -- the weirdest item ever donated to us was a prosthetic hip and leg.On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 2:08 PM, Norris,Erin S <[log in to unmask]> wrote:This message contains confidential information and is intended only for the named individual. If you are not the named individual you are strictly prohibited from disseminating, distributing, or copying this e-mail. Please notify the sender immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system. The sender expressly reserves all privileges and confidentiality which might otherwise be waived as a result of an erroneous or misdirected transmission. E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message, which arise as a result of e-mail transmission. If verification is required please request a hard-copy version. No employee or agent is authorized to conclude any binding agreement on behalf of Scott & White Healthcare or any affiliated entity with another party by email without express written confirmation by the CEO or the Vice President of Supply Chain Services. Scott & White Healthcare www.sw.orgNot my current institution but a former one, and I am not making this up.
A toilet reputed to be from a house John Dillinger had used as a hideout during his heyday of robbing banks.
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Cass Karl
Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2013 2:04 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [MUSEUM-L] Weird Donations
I think, as museum professionals, we have all been in the position of being offered something really, really, weird for our institution, and (maybe I'm alone on this part) wanting to accept it just based on fascination. Cooler heads (and collections policies) normally prevail, but the desire to discover and hold on to the story of the object remains. What is the weirdest, most unusual, or coolest thing that your institution has ever been offered, and had to turn down?
-Casandra Karl
Museum Solutions Consulting
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