Museum of the Weird, Austin, Texas

Erik and I went to Austin, Texas, a couple of weeks ago. I was there for ClioCon, a large legal tech conference, and we stayed an extra day to see a bit of Austin because we had never been before. Heck, this was our first time in Texas.

In planning for the trip, an online search I did for museums in the area turned up around 40, which is a lot of museums. We chose two to visit. While we love museums, we’ve found we can’t pack a bunch into a limited time or we’ll feel rushed and scattered and get nothing out of any of them.

First up was the Museum of the Weird in downtown Austin. Austin’s slogan is “Keep Austin Weird,” so this fits right in. We noticed that downtown Austin has an interesting mix of old, historic buildings alongside modern skyscrapers.

The Museum of the Weird is in one of the old buildings, and the darkness, maze inside, and multiple levels lend to the creepy factor of the museum. There were small staircases, an internal courtyard, and a couple of heavy doors to go through to different exhibit areas.

Bigfoot greets visitors in the gift shop before entering the exhibits.

The yellow swinging doors into the exhibits provide an idea of what is inside. Cartoons on the doors show an Egyptian mummy (3000 years old), shrunken heads, Freaks of Nature (including a two-headed calf), Freakshow (with a skeleton swallowing a flame, I think), and the Fejee Mermaid.

The museum exhibits did not disappoint. All of these things and more weirdness were on display, kicking off with a display explaining the origins of the Dime Museum, which was created by P.T. Barnum in the 1860s to show “unusual and exotic” items, often related to natural history or human beings, to the masses. Dime Museums eventually waned in popularity and gave way to sideshows at traveling carnivals.

A number of items in this section of the museum appeared to be concocted curiosities, like P.T. Barnum’s Fejee Mermaid, which I couldn’t photograph because of the reflection from the glass covering the exhibit. I found an example in another part of the museum.

 

There was also an exhibit case dedicated to the Victorian-era girls who claimed to have photographed fairies, along with a supposed skeleton of a fairy.

And, there was the obligatory case of Texas Bigfoot footprint castings.

There was so much to see in this area that it’s hard to remember it all, but I did find this locked metal box with this urgent note to employees humorous.

Of course, with a note like that, who wouldn’t want to open that box? Lol!

The next area of the museum contained a number of human remains, including shrunken heads and the mummy. I didn’t take photos because these were actual human beings, not the fabricated curiosities in the first part of the exhibit.

There was a photo and story about Joseph Merrick, better known as the Elephant Man. I spent quite a lot of time reading his story, which contained a tidbit that points to the complexities of freak shows. Joseph made a living appearing in freak shows. Around the time he moved to England, the country banned freak shows, putting people, who often couldn’t get jobs elsewhere, out of work. Putting people with unusual physical attributes on display for others to gawk at feels exploitive, but if this was something people chose to do for a living, was it exploitive? Or, was it simply crappy that these folks often had no other choice, and it was exploitive from that standpoint?

After reading Joseph Merrick’s story, it dawned on me as we moved through the rest of the museum, with its narrow halls and uneven staircases, that he and other folks with mobility issues probably couldn’t visit the museum. It is not ADA accessible. I even had some trouble reading the large amounts of small exhibit text, having to kneel and get up close to read text down lower in the cases. (Bifocals, man, sometimes they are the pits.)

The interior courtyard was super cool, with its stone walls and heavy doors leading to the special Minnesota Iceman exhibit (no photos allowed) and the wax museum upstairs. Who would have figured we’d go to Texas and run into a weird Minnesota artifact?

 

The wax museum featured characters from horror movies, like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Frankenstein, King Kong, and Nosferatu.

In addition, there was a section upstairs devoted to natural curiosities, like two-headed animals. I also found the Feejee Mermaid pictured above in this area.

The Museum of the Weird was a fascinating place, with the old building making for a suitably creepy setting. I keep wondering how to recreate that effect in a way that allows everyone to visit.