Download Free Coloring Books from 113 Museums

in Art, Coloring Books, Museums | February 8th, 2019

One can only color so many floral-trimmed affirmations before one begins to crave something slightly more perverse. An emaciated, naked, anthropomorphized mandrake root, say or…

Thy wish is our command, but be prepared to hustle, because today is the final day of Color Our Collections, a compellingly democratic initiative on the part of the New York Academy of Medicine.

Since 2016, the Academy has made an annual practice of inviting other libraries, archives, and cultural institutions around the world to upload PDF coloring pages based on their collections for the public’s free download.

This year 113 institutions took the bait.

Our host, the New York Academy of Medicine kicks things off with the aforementioned mandrakes, and then some.

Medical subjects are a popular theme here. You’ll find plenty of organs and other relevant details to color, compliments of Boston’s Countway Library’s Center for the History of Medicine, London’s Royal College of Physicians, and the Historical Medical Library of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia (aka the Mütter Museum).

The coloring book of the Richardson-Sloane Special Collections Center at the Davenport Public Library is a bit more all-ages. They certainly remind me of my childhood. The work of native son, Patrick J. Costello, above, figures heavily here. Either he deserves a lot of credit for developing the School House Rock aesthetic, or he was one of a number of hard working illustrators tapping into the cartoon‑y, thick-nibbed zeitgeist

The Andover-Harvard Theological Library’s coloring book has some divine options for those who would use their coloring pages as DIY 16th-century bookplates or alphabet primers.

Those who need something more complex will appreciate the intricate maps of the Lithuanian Art Museum’s coloring book. Coloring Franz Hogenberg’s 1581 map of Vilnius is the emotional equivalent of walking the labyrinth for god knows how many hours.

As befits a content website-cum-digital-National-Library, the Memoria Chilena Coloring Book 2019 has something for every taste: flayed anatomical studies, 1940’s fashions, curious kitty cats, and a heaping helping of jesters.

Check out all your options here.

Once you’ve had your way with the Crayolas, please share your creations with the world, using the hashtag #ColorOurCollections.

Participating Institutions 2019

The New York Academy of Medicine Library

Royal College of Physicians, London

OHSU Historical Collections & Archives

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Special Collections

Swarthmore College Libraries

South Carolina State Library

Shenandoah County Library, Truban Archives

Biblioteca de la Universidad de Zaragoza

Christ’s College Library, Cambridge

Tower Hill Botanic Garden

University of Waterloo Special Collections & Archives

Wageningen University & Research

Brunel University Special Collections

Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts

Washington State Library

Saint Francis de Sales Parish United by the Most Blessed Sacrament Parish History Archives

Getty Research Institute

Auckland Museum

Loyola University Chicago Archives & Special Collections

Seton Hall University Libraries

Bibliotheque interuniversitaire de Sante, Paris

Digital Library at Villanova University

West Virginia and Regional History Center

Bass Library, Yale University Library

University of Kansas Libraries

Medical Heritage Library

The Ohio State University Health Sciences Library

University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries

Rutgers University Special Collections and University Archives

University of British Columbia Library

National Library of Medicine

Science History Institute

Ricker Library of Architecture and Art at the University of Illinois

Chautauqua Institution Archives

Bibliotheque et Archives nationales du Quebec

The LuEsther T. Mertz Library of the New York Botanical Garden

Auburn University Special Collections and Archives

Open Museum, Academia Sinica Center for Digital Cultures

Les Champs Libres

Lithuanian Art Museum

Memoria Chilena

Barret Library, Rhodes College

Wales Higher Education Libraries Forum (WHELF)

Royal Anthropological Institute

Delaware Museum of Natural History

James Madison University Libraries

Utah State University Libraries Special Collections & Archives

Stevens Institute of Technology / Archives & Special Collections

Waring Historical Library of the Medical University of South Carolina

Bernard Becker Medical Library at Washington University in St. Louis

University of Puget Sound

Drexel University College of Medicine Legacy Center Archives and Special Collections

Queens’ College Library, Cambridge

Stadtbibliothek Koeln

Andover-Harvard Theological Library

Rare Book and Manuscript CRAI Library at University of Barcelona

Newberry Library

Historical Medical Library of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia

Lambeth Palace Library

Folger Shakespeare Library

University of Glasgow Archives and Special Collections

John J. Burns Library

Biodiversity Heritage Library

The University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa Digital Library

Tennessee State Museum

Center for the History of Medicine, Countway LIbrary

Russian State Library

South Carolina Historical Society

Library Company of Philadelphia

The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary

Pratt Institute Archives

The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis

Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine, University of Minnesota Libraries

Washington University Libraries Julian Edison Department of Special Collections

Libraries and Cultural Resources, University of Calgary

Leonard H. Axe Library, Pittsburg State University

Susquehanna University, Blough-Weis Library

Richardson-Sloane Special Collections Center, Davenport Public Library

Denver Public Library, Western History and Genealogy

Findlay-Hancock County Public Library

Northern Illinois University

Escuela Superior de Artes de Yucatan

Lake County Public Library

United Nations Library Geneva

Jeleniorskie Centrum Informacji i Edukacji Regionalnej Ksiaznica Karkonoska

Women and Leadership Archives, Loyola University Chicago

Grand Portage National Monument Archives Collection

Jagiellonian Library

Botanical Research Institute of Texas

University of North Texas Libraries

Lehigh University Libraries Special Collections

Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Massachusetts General Hospital Archives & Special Collections

Clark Special Collections, McDermott Library, USAFA

Bibliotheque nationale de France

Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art Archive & Library

Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design

British Library

Western University Archives and Special Collections

Europeana

Denver Botanic Gardens

MedChi, The Maryland State Medical Society

Grinnell College Libraries

University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)

Historical Society of Pennsylvania

National Library of Russia

Eastern Kentucky University Special Collections & Archives

Numelyo

Louisiana State University Special Collections

New York State Library

North Carolina Pottery Center

Royal Horticultural Society Libraries

Library of Virginia

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Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, theater maker and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. See her onstage in New York City this Monday as host of Theater of the Apes book-based variety show, Necromancers of the Public Domain. Follow her @AyunHalliday.

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 38 ) |

Explore an Interactive Version of The Wall of Birds, a 2,500 Square-Foot Mural That Documents the Evolution of Birds Over 375 Million Years

in Biology, Museums, Nature, Science | February 4th, 2019

Now, this avian Vatican also has its own Michelangelo.

– Audubon Magazine

And the Class of Aves has its very own avian Pantone chart, created by science illustrator Jane Kim in service of her 2,500 square-foot Wall of Birds mural at Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology.

The custom chart’s fifty-one colors comprise about 90 percent of the finished work. A palette of thirteen Golden Fluid Acrylics supplied the jewel-toned accents so thrilling to birdwatchers.

Along the way, Kim absorbed a tremendous amount of information about the how and why of bird feather coloration:

The iridescence on the neck and back of the Superb Starling comes not from pigment,

but from structural color. The starling’s outer feathers are constructed in a way

that refracts light like myriad prisms, making the bird appear to shimmer. The eponymous

coloring of the Lilac-breasted Roller results from a different kind of structural

color, created when woven microstructures in the feathers, called barbs and barbules,

reflect only the shorter wavelengths of light like blue and violet.

The primary colors that lend their name to the Red-and-yellow Barbet are

derived from a class of pigments called carotenoids that the bird absorbs in its diet.

These are the same compounds that turn flamingos’ feathers pink. As a member of

the family Musophagidae, the Hartlaub’s Turaco displays pigmentation unique in the

bird world. Birds have no green pigmentation; in most cases, verdant plumage is a

combination of yellow carotenoids and blue structural color. Turacos are an exception,

displaying a green, copper-based pigment called turacoverdin that they absorb

in their herbivorous diet. The flash of red on the Hartlaub’s underwings comes from

turacin, another copper-based pigment unique to the family.

Kim also boned up on her subjects’ mating rituals, dietary habits, song styles, and male/female differences prior to inscribing the 270 life-size, lifelike birds onto the lab’s largest wall.

She examined specimens from the center’s collection and reviewed centuries’ worth of field observations.

(The seventeenth-century English naturalist John Ray dismissed the hornbill family as having a “foul look,” a colonialism that ruffled Kim’s own feathers somewhat. In retaliation, she dubbed the Great Hornbill, “the Cyrano of the Jungle” owing to his “tequila-sunrise-hued facial phallus,” and selected him as the cover boy for her book about the mural.)

Research and preliminary sketching consumed an entire year, after which it took 17 months to inscribe 270 life-size creatures—some long extinct—onto the lab’s main wall. The birds are set against a greyscale map of the world, and while many are depicted in flight, every one save the Wandering Albatross has a foot touching its continent of origin.

Those who can’t visit the Wall of Birds (official title: From So Simple a Beginning) in person, can log some digital birdwatching using a spectacular interactive web-based version of the mural that provides plenty of information about each specimen, some of it literary. (The aforementioned Albatross’ entry contains a passing reference to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.)

Explore the Wall of Birds’ interactive features here.

You can download a free chapter of The Wall of Birds: One Planet, 243 Families, 375 Million Years by subscribing to Kim’s mailing list here.

Via Hyperallergic

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Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, theater maker and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. See her onstage in New York City February 11 for Theater of the Apes book-based variety show, Necromancers of the Public Domain. Follow her @AyunHalliday.

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch the Painstaking and Nerve-Racking Process of Restoring a Drawing by Michelangelo

in Architecture, Art, Museums | January 4th, 2019

We live in a disposable culture, but certain things warrant the time and effort of mending—good shoes, hearts, Michelangelo drawings…

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s paper conservator Marjorie Shelley, above, had the nerve-wracking task of tackling the latter, in preparation for last year’s Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer exhibition.

The work in question, a two-sided sketch featuring designs for a monumental altar or facade, thought to be San Silvestro in Capite, Rome, arrived in sad condition.

The 16th-century linen and flax paper on which the precious renderings were made was stained with mold, and badly creased due to a poorly repaired tear and two long-ago attempts to mount it for easier viewing, one by the artist’s blind nephew and another by collector and biographer Filippo Baldinucci.

Like many restoration experts, Shelley exhibits extraordinary patience and nerves of steel. Identifying the damage and its cause is just the beginning. The hands-on portion of her work involves introducing solvents and moisture, both of which have the potential to further damage the delicate drawing. Even though she chooses the least invasive of tools—a tiny brush—to loosen the 500-year-old adhesive, one slip could spell disaster. It’s not just the drawing that’s of historical import. The well-intended mountings are also part of the narrative, and must be preserved as such.

As she explains above, a bedazzling Sistine Chapel-like makeover was neither possible nor preferable.

One wonders how many of the 702,516 visitors who attended the exhibition during its 3 month run noticed Shelley’s handiwork (or even the drawing itself, given the large number of other, sexier works on display).

How an Art Conservator Completely Restores a Damaged Painting: A Short, Meditative Documentary

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Rembrandt’s Masterpiece, The Night Watch, Will Get Restored and You Can Watch It Happen Live, Online

Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, theater maker and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. See her onstage in New York City this January as host of Theater of the Apes book-based variety show, Necromancers of the Public Domain. Follow her @AyunHalliday.

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch a Playthrough of the Oldest Board Game in the World, the Sumerian Royal Game of Ur, Circa 2500 BC

in Games, History, Museums | December 20th, 2018

They may not surprise the average market analyst, but the gaming industry’s figures tell a pretty compelling story. Newzoo estimates that “2.3 billion gamers across the globe will spend $137. 9 billion on games in 2018.” VentureBeat reports that mobile games account for over 50 percent of the total. Currently, “about 91 percent of the global market is digital, meaning that $125.3 billion worth of games flows through digitally connected channels as opposed to physical retail.”

That’s a lot of virtual dough floating around in virtual worlds. But this vast and rapid growth in digital gaming does not mean physical games are going away anytime soon—and that includes cards, board games, and other tabletop games, a market that has “surged as players have grown jaded with the digital screens they toil over during the work day,” wrote Joon Ian Wong in 2016.

Venture capital is flowing into board game development. Tabletop bars and cafes are popping up all over the world, encouraging people to mingle over Scrabble and Cards Against Humanity. It seems the time is just right to revive the oldest playable board game in the world. If someone hasn’t already launched a Kickstarter to bankroll a new Royal Game of Ur, I suspect we’ll see one any day now. At least four-and-a-half-thousand years old, according to British Museum Curator Irving Finkel, the Royal Game of Ur was probably invented by the Sumerians. And it seems like it might still be a blast, and a considerable challenge, to play.

“You might think it’s so old that it’s irretrievable to us, that we’ve got no idea what it was like playing, what the rules were like,” Finkel says in the video at the top, “but all sorts of evidence has come to light so that we know how this game was played.” He promises, in no uncertain terms, to wipe the floor with YouTuber Tom Scott in a Royal Game of Ur showdown, and Scott, who has never played the game before, seems at a decided disadvantage. But watch their contest to see how the game is played and whether Finkel makes good on his threat. Along the way, he liberally shares his knowledge.

For a shorter course on the Royal Game of Ur, see Finkel’s video above. It takes him a couple minutes to get around to introducing his subject, the discovery and deciphering of the “world’s oldest rule book.” A consummate ancient history detective, Finkel describes how he decoded an ancient tablet that explained a game, but which game, no one knew. So, the dedicated curator tried the rules on every mysterious ancient game he could find, till he landed on the “game of twenty squares” from Mesopotamia. “It fitted perfectly,” he says with relish. See the original board, pieces, and dice from about 2500 BC, and learn how Finkel had been searching for its rules of play since he was 9 years old.

For more of Finkel’s passionate public scholarship, see him demonstrate how to write in cuneiform and read about how his work on cuneiform tablets led to him discovering the oldest reference to the Noah’s Ark myth.

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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness.

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 8 ) |

Take a Virtual Tour of Brazil’s National Museum & Its Artifacts: Google Digitized the Museum’s Collection Before the Fateful Fire

in Museums | December 20th, 2018

How to describe the magnitude of the loss when Brazil’s Museu Nacional caught fire in September? The New Yorker’s Alejandro Chacoff ventured an analogy that would resonate with readers of that magazine: “It’s as if, in New York, the American Museum of Natural History and the New School, or a part of the Columbia campus, had been built on the same spot, and then was reduced to ashes.” The 200-year-old museum lost an estimated 92.5 percent of its 20-million-item archive, one of the largest collections of natural history and anthropological artifacts in the world — but not before Google Arts & Culture digitized enough to recreate the experience of visiting the Museu Nacional virtually.

“Starting back in 2016, Google Arts & Culture had begun working with the museum to bring their collection online — so that anyone, anywhere in the world could see and learn about these ancient artifacts,” writes Google Arts & Culture Program Manager Chance Coughenour.

“Now for the first time ever, you can virtually step inside the museum and learn about its lost collection through Street View imagery and online exhibits.” In this way you can still experience a portion of “the incredible diversity of artifacts in Brazil’s National Museum” that “reflected centuries of Brazil’s culture and natural history, from the Amazon’s endangered butterflies to beautifully-crafted indigenous masks and decorated pottery.”

You can take a virtual tour of the highlights of the Museu Nacional as it was here, a tour that of course includes a visit with the museum’s prized possession: the 12,000-year old Luzia, the oldest skeleton found in the Americas, whom you can see just as she stood on display in museum view. Miraculously, Luzia counts as one of the artifacts mostly recovered from the aftermath of the conflagration, and the museum has announced an ambitious restoration plan that will cost R$10 million, an amount provided as emergency funds by the Brazilian Government — and an amount much greater than the Museu Nacional, which by its 200th anniversary had reached a state of not just serious neglect but near-complete abandonment, was ever able to get while still intact. Even in the case of vast repositories of a nation’s cultural heritage, you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

via Artsy

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Google Lets You Take a 360-Degree Panoramic Tour of Street Art in Cities Across the World

Take a Virtual Reality Tour of the World’s Stolen Art

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Faceboo k.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Two Cats Keep Trying to Get Into a Japanese Art Museum … and Keep Getting Turned Away: Meet the Thwarted Felines, Ken-chan and Go-chan

in Art, Comedy, Life, Museums | November 26th, 2018

Paging director Hayao Miyazaki.

A compelling subject for a feature length animation is hanging around the sliding glass doors of Hiroshima Prefecture’s Onomichi City Museum of Art.

In June of 2016, a black tomcat started showing up at the museum on the regular, for reasons unknown.

Those open to the sort of narrative whimsy at which Miyazaki excels might choose to believe that the beast was drawn by a cat-themed exhibit of work by noted wildlife photographer and filmmaker Mitsuaki Iwago, a portion of which would have been visible to him through the modern building’s large glass windows.

Whatever his reasons, the cat, Ken-chan, whose owners run a nearby restaurant, was refused entry by a white-gloved security guard and other staffers, whose efforts to send him on his way started blowing up the Internet shortly after his first appearance.

Eventually, Ken-chan started bringing back-up in the form of a well-mannered orange tomcat the museum staff dubbed Go-chan.

Their visits have proved to be a boon for both the small museum and the city they call home.

The New York Public Library has its lions.

Boston’s Public Garden has its ducks.

Onomichi and its small art museum have Ken-chan and Go-chan, whose Internet fame is quickly outpacing the supply of commemorative tote bags, below.

Tender hearted fans bombard the museum’s Twitter account with requests to grant the feline pair entry, but the museum brass is wisely prioritizing dramatic tension over consummation.

Meanwhile, officials in Zelenogradsk, a Russian resort town boasting both a cat museum and giant cat street monument have invited Ken-chan, Go-chan, and museum staff to be their guests in March, for a cat-centric holiday celebration.

For now, Ken-chan and Go-chan are sticking close to home, alternately entertaining and disappointing visitors who show up, camera in hand, hoping to catch them in the act.

Armchair travelers can enjoy a cat’s eye view tour of Onomichi, thanks to Google Street View-style 360-degree camera technology.

And photographer Iwago shares some pro advice for anyone seeking to capture feline subjects:

…male cats are easier to photograph. Male cats seem to have more latitude and leisure in their lives. Because females do things such as raise the kittens, they concentrate more on what goes on around them. Because males are out on patrol, it is more likely that you will encounter them. Because they have the free time, they’ll let you hang out and photograph them.

Depending on the cat, there are a number of ways to get a cat’s attention. For example, when it’s starting to get dark out, you need to use a lower shutter speed. However, this means that the cat will be blurry if it moves. To avoid this, in such situations, I say to the cat, ‘Stop, hold your breath!’ At that instant, when the cat is frozen, I snap the picture. When you speak out to a cat, they get the message. That said, you can also get shots of good cat body language by letting them roam freely. They don’t need to be looking at the camera.

Even a cellphone camera is enough. However, if you don’t have a telephoto lens, you’re going to have to get close to the cat you’re photographing. Due to this, it might be good to use a single-lens reflex (SLR) camera if you are photographing outside. However, if you are photographing the cat you live at home with, a big camera may prove intimidating. To avoid this problem, it is necessary to regularly put your camera in a place that the cat can see. It is good to start snapping pictures only after your cat has gotten over its fear of cameras. If you use a flash to photograph cats indoors, their hair will look spiky and lose its softness. Therefore, I recommend avoiding a flash. I also recommend not using a tripod, considering the line of sight will become too high. When I am photographing cats, I kneel down so that I am at the same eye line as they are. It’s as if I’m crawling forward into battle.

Follow the Onomichi City Museum of Art on Twitter to keep up with Ken-chan and Go-chan.

via The Guardian/Hyperallergic

Medieval Cats Behaving Badly: Kitties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Century Manuscripts

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Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, theater maker and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Join her in NYC this December for the 10th anniversary production of Greg Kotis’ apocalyptic holiday tale, The Truth About Santa, and the next monthly installment of her book-based variety show, Necromancers of the Public Domain. Follow her @AyunHalliday.

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

A Space of Their Own, a New Online Database, Will Feature Works by 600+ Overlooked Female Artists from the 15th-19th Centuries

in Art, Museums | November 9th, 2018

Many of the works we found—well, nobody knew they were there. Nobody knew anything about the artists. … They weren’t important, but rather beholden to their fathers, mothers, and husbands. They had no voice.

— Jane Fortune, Founder of Advancing Women Artists (AWA)

The paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures the late Jane Fortune refers to above were discovered in museum storage spaces throughout Florence.

Many of their female creators were acclaimed during their lifetimes. By the time Fortune set about restoring their work—and visibility —to the public view, they were virtually unknown, even to museum staff.

Saint Catherine with Lily by Plautilla Nelli

That may change as early as the fall of 2019, when A Space of Their Own, an illustrated online database of over 600 female artists working in the US and Europe between the 15th and 19th centuries, launches.

In preparation for their reintroduction, many of the works appearing on A Space of Their Own have undergone extensive restoration, courtesy of Jane Fortune’s nonprofit Advancing Women Artists.

David and Bathsheba by Artemisia Gentileschi

Interestingly, women make up the majority of art restorers in Florence. This professional dominance can be traced back to the mid-60s, when a catastrophic flood laid waste to millions of the city’s art treasures. “It was the first time women began wearing trousers in Florence,” Linda Falcone, AWA’s current director told artnet. “Women’s liberation in Florence is deeply linked to the art restoration effort.”

Many of the artists in the database were self-taught, barred from seeking formal training or studying anatomy on account of their gender. They could not hope to make a living from their talents when women were forbidden from issuing invoices. And then, of course, there are the demands of marriage and motherhood.

Small wonder they have been so underrepresented in museums and art history books.

Self-portrait by Leonetta Pieraccini Cecchi

Peruse a menu of paintings in need of restoration sponsorship and learn more about the artists on AWA’s website. Sign up for the newsletter for updates in advance of A Space of Their Own’s grand opening.

via Hyperallergic

The Iconic Urinal & Work of Art, “Fountain,” Wasn’t Created by Marcel Duchamp But by the Pioneering Dada Artist Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

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Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, theater maker and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Join her in NYC on Monday, November 12 for another monthly installment of her book-based variety show, Necromancers of the Public Domain. Follow her @AyunHalliday.

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 30 ) |

The Disgusting Food Museum Curates 80 of the World’s Most Repulsive Dishes: Maggot-Infested Cheese, Putrid Shark & More

in Food & Drink, Museums | November 8th, 2018

Often we get to know each other by talking which foods we like. Perhaps even more often, we get to know each other by talking about which foods we hate. Entertaining disagreements tend to arise from such discussions, usually around traditionally divisive comestibles like anchovies, cilantro, brussel sprouts, or the Japanese dish of fermented soybeans known as natto. But however many of us prefer to avoid them, these foods all look more or less conventional compared to the dishes curated by the Disgusting Food Museum, which the Washington Post’s Maura Judkis describes as “the world’s first exhibition devoted to foods that some would call revolting.”

“The exhibit has 80 of the world’s most disgusting foods,” says the museum’s official site. Adventurous visitors will appreciate the opportunity to smell and taste some of these notorious foods. Do you dare smell the world’s stinkiest cheese? Or taste sweets made with metal cleansing chemicals?” Judkis notes that “the museum’s name and its contents are pretty controversial — one culture’s disgusting is another culture’s delicacy.

That goes for escamoles, the tree-ant larvae eaten in Mexico, or shirako, the cod sperm eaten in Japan, or bird’s nest soup, a Chinese dish of nests made from bird saliva.” It all goes to emphasize the Disgusting Food Museum’s stated premises: “Disgust is one of the six fundamental human emotions. While the emotion is universal, the foods that we find disgusting are not. What is delicious to one person can be revolting to another.”

With interest in food seemingly at an all-time high — and not just food, but traditional food from all around the world — the cultural studies wing of academia has begun to get serious mileage out of that proposition. But the Disgusting Food Museum has taken on a less intellectual and much more visceral mission, placing before its visitors durian fruit, banned from many a public space across Asia for its sheer stinkiness; casu marzu, which the museum’s site describes as “maggot-infested cheese from Sardinia”; and hákarl, which Judkis describes as “a putrid shark meat dish from Iceland that the late Anthony Bourdain said was one of the worst things he had ever tasted.”

You can learn more about these and the Disgusting Food Museum’s other offerings from the Associated Press video at the top of the post, as well as at Smithsonian and the New York Times. If you’d like to see, smell, and even taste some of its exhibits for yourself, you’ll have to make the trek out to Malmö, Sweden. The project comes from the mind of Samuel West, a Swede best known for creating the Museum of Failure (previously featured here on Open Culture), whose half-American parentage has made him familiar with several items of U.S. cuisine that gross out non-Americans, from Spam to Jell‑O pasta salad (shades of James Lileks’ midcentury midwest-focused Gallery of Regrettable Food) to Rocky Mountain oysters. Despite being American myself, I’ve never known anyone who likes that last, a dish made of bull testicles, or at least no one has ever admitted to me that they like it. But if someone did, I’d certainly feel as if I’d learned something about them.

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What Prisoners Ate at Alcatraz in 1946: A Vintage Prison Menu

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Faceboo k.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Download Free Coloring Books from 113 Museums

Explore an Interactive Version of The Wall of Birds, a 2,500 Square-Foot Mural That Documents the Evolution of Birds Over 375 Million Years

Watch the Painstaking and Nerve-Racking Process of Restoring a Drawing by Michelangelo

Watch a Playthrough of the Oldest Board Game in the World, the Sumerian Royal Game of Ur, Circa 2500 BC

Take a Virtual Tour of Brazil’s National Museum & Its Artifacts: Google Digitized the Museum’s Collection Before the Fateful Fire

Two Cats Keep Trying to Get Into a Japanese Art Museum … and Keep Getting Turned Away: Meet the Thwarted Felines, Ken-chan and Go-chan

A Space of Their Own, a New Online Database, Will Feature Works by 600+ Overlooked Female Artists from the 15th-19th Centuries

The Disgusting Food Museum Curates 80 of the World’s Most Repulsive Dishes: Maggot-Infested Cheese, Putrid Shark & More

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