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Mrs Spider has bought an item of furniture that I need to pick up on Saturday, so I've got a 120 mile drive to Solihull for my sins, however on the way back I'm having a few hours on my own in my favourite museum. RAF Cosford.
Let's have a list of what's good and bad.
Good
RAF Cosford
NRM York
Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation Museum - Shambolic, but charming and packed full of stuff
Bad
MOSI - It is getting a bit knackered
Hard to choose between the V&A, Science Museum and the Imperial War.
The Natural History is always a bit of a let down, also showing its age.
Bletchley Park and the adjacent Computer Museum
Good:
Tangmere
NRM York
Natural History and Science Museum, if you can get a quiet time
The kids and I used to love MOSI, but this was a few years ago. Shame to hear it's gone downhill.
Pitt Rivers/Museum of Natural History - Oxford
I love the building. Just zoom in on the detailing on that roof.
The Vasa Museum in Stockholm. The only place in the world I've walked into and been stopped dead in my tracks.
Dammit! I was going to suggest Vasamuseet too! +1 for it then.
V&A
Wallace Collection
Met Art in NY
2 that i was very impressed by on recent visit to Cambridge:
- Fitzwilliam
- Scott Polar Research institute museum.
Also love the little Tank museum near me in Norfolk, they have Guy Martin WW1 recreation, not very big but everyone there is very knowledgeable and clearly loves what they do.
Bovington Tank Museum.
The Imperial War Museum in Salford is an interesting take on what a museum should be, and always has interesting side exhibitions on as well
Not been to IWR Duxford for years. I reckon that's due a visit again soon
I love the science museum in London.
I love little random local museums, highlights include;
New Walk - Leicester
The McManus - Dundee
Montrose museum.
Kelvingrove in Glasgow for me.
Coming from Portsmouth and going to the seafront for the first time in years last summer, it was the first time i had been to see the Mary Rose since they have stopped spraying the preservative on and they have set up in position and they project moving images on to the hull and decks, it is amazing what they have done with it and the accompanying museum is really well done, especially for someone like me who watched it raised from seabed when i was at school. (i hate how they have turned lots of the old historic dockyard into the usual cinema/shops/ bars though).
Tate Modern, love it, whatever is on gets your mind working, even if you don't particularly like it.
I'll never forget Ground Zero in New York. It's a superb place architecturally as well.
I second Pitt Rivers at Oxford. Plus the aviation museum at old sarum airfield Salisbury for old-skool museum feel and being able to clamber through and sit in all sorts of bits of aircraft.
Good
Jodrell Bank (Not strictly a museum but it seems designed to enable to take as much or as little information without being patronising).
The Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds (The surgery floor is a bit of a let down once you’ve got past the initial icky bit but the rest is good)
Bliss Hill at Coalbrookdale (As long as you can ignore the lack of pollution, horse shit, and dodgy food)
The Justice Museum in Nottingham is worth a visit to
Good -
Ufizzi, Florence
NM of Scotland, Edinburgh
Kelvingrove, Glasgow
Bad -
Riverside, Glasgow
Musée d'Orsay
OK it's mostly painting and sculpture, but there are some fantastic pieces in it, The Origin of the World by Courbet for instance, and the top floor is just amazing, there's a room that's just Manet,followed by a Monet, then a Cezanne, and a Rousseau, a Pizarro...and then you turn the corner and you're in room of Van Gogh. and then here's a Suerat, and a Matisse
It's almost too much to take in. I can happily spend a day there.
Will just lob this in https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/may/07/cuts-england-museums-london-cliff-edge and we can weigh up how many of people's faves are in / out of the capital
Good: UK only
Barbara Hepworth in Wakefield & her StIves workshop (run by Tate)
Henry Moore in Leeds
Anthony Gormley (pretty much anywhere his installations are)
Yorkshire Sculpture Park near Wakefield
Design Museum in Kensington
Camera Museum in Holborn
Bad:
Imperial War Museum
Good - IWM Duxford.
Watts gallery (and chapel!), Compton
Walker, Liverpool
D'Orsay ('The wheel of fortune' Burne-Jones)
Kelvingrove (great and eclectic, good for families)
The Newcastle one (?) has a great Holman Hunt
Pitt-Rivers
Tate Britain (pre-raph room)
Manchester Art Gallery (shall be there in about 5 minutes)
Birmingham Art Gallery
National Gallery (Van Eyck, Holbein)
V and A (Grinling Gibbons)
In the UK: NHM and Science, NRM York, Imperial War North I felt is better than the IW in London. Despite living in Nottingham it's been a very long time since I've done the Justice Museum. Not sure if it's open to the public but Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh was a great venue for conference drinks.
Overseas, I was very impressed with the Mercedes Benz Museum in Stuttgart. Just the building alone was impressive.
Musée d’Orsay
Seconded. The higher up you go the more mind blowing it becomes.
There is a small side museum in St Peter's in Rome. Not the big Vatican Museum. Just a little one tucked away round a corner so most folk miss it. Only a couple of € entry fee. Well worth looking for.
This one in Zagreb
museum of american war atrocities in ho-chi-minh city was an eye opener.
telegraph museum at porthcurno is worth a look if you are down that way.
Musée d’Orsay + 1
Every time I go to Paris, I have to visit. Keep finding new parts. The Degas ballerinas are wonderful.
I just visited South Wales Aviation Museum- its just opened & only has 10 or so planes but it was dead good. All the planes are in varying states of repair and you can touch them, get up close etc.
The two Ferrari museums, in Maranello and Modena are worth it if you're in the area. Worth a special trip if you have a car mad son.
The canal Museum in Amsterdam is pretty interesting if you want to know how the canals evolved and were built.
Interesting read. Do museums need to be council run i.e. publicly funded, and do they need to be free?Will just lob this in https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/may/07/cuts-england-museums-london-cliff-edge and we can weigh up how many of people’s faves are in / out of the capital
I was going to say how hard it would be to choose between the Bakelite museum in Williton and Barometer World.
Sadly it seems that the Bakelite museum is looking for a new home so Barometer World it is.
Te Papa - Museum of New Zealand, Wellington
Cu Chi Tunnels - Vietnam
Blaenavon World Heritage Site and Big Pit
Wieliczka Salt Mine near Krakow
Yorkshire Sculpture Park
National Railway Museum
Imperial War Museum especially the Holocaust exhibition
Good:
Jarrow Hall (formerly Bede's World) in Newcastle
Bad (or at least it was when I last went):
Imperial War Museum in Salford
EDIT: I should add that, although it has long since become something else, I always wanted to love URBIS in Manchester - the museum of urban life - but man, was that ever a let-down when I took the kids back in 2003 or 04.
SECOND EDIT: I didn't know what MOSI was until just now. Considering the comments above, I wonder if the GMA just doesn't know how to create and maintain a decent museum.
I'm a bit of a geek so...
Hunterian museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. Sadly closed until 2021
Bletchley Park
Greenwich Royal Observatory
In the US, the National Air and Space Museum will blow you away. Boeing museum in Seattle is also very good. Top Gun in Miramar less so. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a favourite.
For cars, the Alfa Romeo museum outside Milan is the best I've been to. Even Mrs TiRed enjoyd it and she doesn't like cars!
NRM York. We went earlier this year and spent hours longer than expected in there. One of the highlights was a tour of the stores with an ‘explainer’. I thought the tour with explainer thing might be a bit naff, but it was absolutely great. Other highlight was the short brake van ride behind a steam loco (cue hyper excited kids!) The brake van had a little stove going in there, and it was proper cosy. I really like the child friendly relaxed family vibe in the museum. Proper cooked dinner from the restaurant in there too....eat yer greens🙂
Yorkshire Sculpture Park near Wakefield
Superb place.
Schindler Museum in Krakow - really well done.
Manchester Art Gallery.
Port Sunlight.
Tate Modern.
Henry Burton bike shop in Stafford. If you want a new mountain bike with 100mm stem (ahedset or quill) STX-RC groupset, clips & straps, that's the place for you.
You can tart it up with an XT Sharkfin chainsuck protector too.
Mind you, I can still get 27" tyres (not completely perished yet) there for my pub bike.
As far as real museums go, the one in Dubrovnik featuring the photos of the civil war is pretty eye opening.
In the US, the National Air and Space Museum will blow you away.
Beat me to it. The Smithsonian Air & Space museum in DC is amazing (as are all the Smithsonians really).
Italian Air Force Museum on Lago di Bracciano is fabulous and well worth a trip. Just hanger after hanger of amazing aircraft.
Pitt Rivers in Oxford is brilliant (kids love the shrunken heads)
NMS in Edinburgh is very good. I've been going in for 20 years and I still see something new every time.
Forgot about the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Great place!
Me and my daughter drew a massive flower there on Stara. Two bods in a little 4x4 came over to find out what we were up to.
https://www.strava.com/activities/664332384
Rescue Services Museum in Sheffield. They even have a Trabant Fire Engine from East Germany!
I haven't been to either in the last couple of years, but the Coventry Transport Museum is good (with a bike section), especially for free, and the British Motor Museum at Gaydon is spendier but also good. Lots of additional shows there too; Gaydon Land Rover show this weekend
Our local, the Swiss Military Museum in Ruenthal and I was pretty amazed by the Museum of WWII in Gdansk.
Though not technically museums, any of the Holocaust sites in Poland... makes you think...
Any time I'm in London, I go to the British Museum and generally just check out the new stuff, look at the rosetta stone, and go and walk around the elgin marbles hall which is a pretty excellent and suitably monolithic space
The motor bike museum in Birmingham is well worth a visit.
British Museum is great for families. We borrow their activity backpacks which really get the kids (& parents) engaged with the exhibits and are great fun. There's a room for eating your packed lunch as well!
Scince Museum in Wroughton used to be good (full of old planes and space rockets) but now appears to be closed.
I haven't been for an absolute age so I don't know how much has changed, but the New Gallery in Walsall was always a real pleasure to visit. I used to be a nodding acquaintance of the first director back in the day (oh god - really back in the day now I think about it) and his friendliness seemed to infuse the whole staff - I don't think I've ever been to another venue where you'd be so readily and naturally welcomed and greeted - a weird mix of uncompromising polished black concrete monolithic architecture and effortlessly friendly staff.
I was really underwhelmed by the Science Museum when I went there last year - dowdy, dark with some pretty outdated material - in the 8 years since the space shuttle programme ended it doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone to update any labels to that effect for instance.
Grampian Transport Museum, Alford. Surprisingly good.
The Aviation Museum in East Fortune is surprisingly good, worth a look just for the Concorde bit.
I’m a sucker for the little quirky ones.
I used to love the Cars of the Stars museum in Keswick.
Telegraph Museum in Porthcurno is brilliant and all also the exhibits in Flambards in Helston.
Also the Gem Rock Museum in Creetown
Continuing on the aviation theme, you’ll enjoy the army museum of flying at middle wallop. It’s just been renovated. Also a hidden gem for the serious geek is the Berkshire aviation museum where you can see a fairey rotodyne. Not the big Fairey, but one of the prototypes.
And to cougar’s point “yes that is Chuck Yeager’s Bell X1”. “Yes that is the Wright Flyer” and repeat.... I haven’t been to the larger hanger at Dulles airport yet, which is their overflow.
Further afield, the updated aviation museum at Toulouse airport is excellent too. Go and walk through the test Concorde (they have two) and marvel at the ashtrays. It was the official presidential transport. The building is as impressive as the exhibits.
If you want tanks, Bovingdon is fabulous too.
Actually, the museum that stands out for me probably more than any other that I have visited in my life is what used to be known as the "Confederate Air Force" Museum in Harlingen, Texas.
It has since moved to another base in Texas, and been renamed the "Commemorative Air Force", but they were AMAZING!
I visited their base many times as a kid, and got to look inside a:
B-25 Mitchell
B-29 Superfortress
B-17 Flying Fortress
P-40 Warhawk
F4U Corsair
P-51 Mustang
just to name a few that stand out in my memory. If you're an aircraft nerd, take a look at the above link. You'll be glad you did.
Agree with many - Duxford, British Museum, IWM but also add:
Pergamon Museum in Berlin. With the freaking gates of Babylon!!!
NASA (Johnson space center) in Houston - Saturn rocket + command centres
Air and Space museum in Chantilly (where Smithsonian puts the planes that don't fit in DC) - like The Discovery and SR-71
Brooklands in Weybridge - amazing cars, Concorde and great feel for early motor car racing
Minuteman Missile National Historic Site - freaking nuclear missile.amd you can press the button
reykjavik phallological museum - for perspective.
Tate Britain ,Tate Modern ,Science museum & RAF Hendon.
Jet Age Museum near Gloucester. You can sit in a Vulcan cockpit.
Brooklands in Weybridge is one of my favourites. I’d call it a living museum as there’s always an event on, and they have a history of the bicycle exhibition which is worth a look, although some of my retro bikes might be better than some they have. Kids love it too and it’s very hands on.
Hanger 1 at Salzburg airport. Owned by Red Bull and full of used Red Bull F1 cars and WW2 aircraft still in regular use. Free entry but they make their money from the drinks and food in the restaurant.
The AVRO museum at Woodford is pretty good too. Vulcan, VC10 and Nimrod cockpit access.
Tried to book a group visit though for my cub pack though and they were so awful to deal with that we gave up!
Going here https://www.fleetairarm.com/ in the summer. Looks good.
For the uber nerds there is the trolley bus museum at Sandtofts S Yorks.
It’s only open on certain days so check the website...
On the same theme there is the Tramway Museum at Crick in Debyshire.
There is also a tram museum in Birkenhead but that only opens occasionally but well worth seeking out.
Coca Cola museum in Atlanta. Gurkha museum in Pokhara. Burping and incredible stories of men you would not want to fight.
I’m a sucker for the little quirky ones
We've done the Museum of Military Medicine and are lining up the Royal Logistics Corps Museum and the Royal Army Physical Training Corps Museum to do next. Trouble is, for added quikiness most are closed at weekends.............
Natural History museum in Tring is our favourite. It's free, which is great, but massive fun and easily occupies us all for a few hours. Not hugely interactive but they have a few digital exhibits now.
Lucky to live near to Bletchley Park also, fab museum and great value.
I have not visited any of the Roald Dahl museums since I was at school; worth taking the kids to one?
In the UK: NRM york is excellent. NRM Shildon is very good too.
Abroad:
The twin Technical museuems in Speyer and Sinsheim absolutely blow away anything I've seen anywhere else in the world.
USS Intrepid in NYC where you can get very up close to a whol array of american aeropsace, as well as wander around a cool aircraft carrier.
Evergreen Air Museum in Oregon, home of the Huges H-4 "Spruce Goose"
The cosmonaut museum in Moscow is amazing. Even more amazing is the massive titanium scuplture outside next to the memorial.
I'd like to add the James Joyce museum in Dublin. It's based in his old house and explains how he wrote most of his work surrounded by a wife and young family, who were no doubt tearing the place apart and causing general chaos, which goes a long way to explain why most of his output is unreadable crap.
If you've ever had to read Ulysees or Finnegans Wake then you'll understand. Is it the pinnacle of Modernism and pure genius, or is it just the lunatic inner mind of someone suffering young children?
Exhibit a)
The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoord-enenthurnuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes:and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since devlinsfirst loved livv
The David Mellor Museum of Cutlery, Traffic Lights and Bus Shelters
He's pretty much the reason Britain looks like Britain. I also spent about £600 on cutlery.
For quirky ones, Internal Fire in Wales- the museum of the diesel engine. Nothing as exciting as a car diesel engine for them though, they're all about the static stuff-pumps, factory engines, and loads of the little ones used for electrical generation before Wales was connected to the national grid (in 2017). Very nicely straddles the line between a museum and a life-ruining hoarding issue. Absolutely loved it.
(there's a merlin engine stuffed in a corner that has a wee sign that more or less says "Was in some plane or another, I forget which. Whatevs.". And one of the exhibits was bought on ebay while drunk.
Brooklands - if for no other reason than the sheer heritage of the place, and the nostalgia of the sheds/hangers etc
+1 for Te Papa, where else can you check out the brilliance of a Britten V1000!
What about the Lawnmower Museum in Southport?
Yes it does exist....I've been there - twice!!!
I'll happily agree with so much of the above, especially the Science Museum, V and A and British Museum- my God those gold torcs leave me breathless.
I spent time studying for my thesis in the Natural History Museum, their collections are just stunning, jaw-droppingly awesome. They are just properly amazing things. The exhibits in the Cadogan Gallery at the top of the stairs include some of Banks' specimens, Moon rock, Dodo remains and more. And to my mind, the most wondrous object, the London Archaeopteryx.
I love Beamish. I like museums where you get to touch and climb on things. Not sure my kids like it as much as me... 🙂
Has anyone been to the Dornier museum at Freidrichshafen?
Going to the rail museum in York on Saturday for the first time. Be with the wife and kids so said I'll keep it down to 5 or 6 hours, come back for a proper visit at a later date.
I've been to the Philadephia museum of art quite a few times - a museum better known for the steps outside than the artwork is pretty unique - but its top level inside. Steps are better though, tbh.
Thirded the Pitt Rivers in Oxford. In many ways the building is more interesting than what's in it. Just the place in which to build a Steampunk time machine
Hancock ..Newcastle (it's free to get in !)
also visited Carlisle Airport / Museum a few years back and got to climb inside a Vulcan Bomber ..unbelievable as to how little space was given to the cockpit / crew ..compared to the overall size of the aircraft ..