(article) The American Dime Museum

The American Dime Museum
Posted by Keith in Baltimore; Places To Visit on 17/Mar/2007

Dime Museum We were in the greater Baltimore area to visit the American Dime Museum, an example of and homage to the old dime museums and sideshow displays that were a staple of traveling carnivals and circuses during the late 19th and early 20th century. For a mere dime, dupes and rubes could file through a museum of the strange and curious and marvel at everything from a two-headed calf to a mermaid from Fiji...

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Actually, we've had something similar in St.Petersburg for centuries, except it was never presented as "lowbrow" entertainment - rather it was like a museum of scientific curiosities, although officially there's much more to it (it's called "Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography"):

http://www.kunstkamera.ru/

English version:
http://www.kunstkamera.ru/en/

It was established in 1714 by Peter I ("the Great"). I believe the origin's of the name (as many things in St Petersburg) are German.

Anyway, high brow or not, formain-treated species (particularly those with two heads and other curious "features"), both animal and human (!) abound in this museum...

Anatomical collections consist of liquid (preserved in ethanol) and dry anatomical specimens from the early years of the Kunstkamera, and a number of other anatomical materials. The depositories contain 24 anatomical collections comprising 1,388 specimens. They also house F. Ruysch’s materials totaling 937 preparations. The Russian anatomical collection consists of 144 specimens made in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Apart from these, the department owns many later teratological collections comprising malformed foetuses, both human and animal.

Check it out
http://www.kunstkamera.ru/en/collections/anthropological_collections/

Looks nice and similar to parts of the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. I always wonder about things like this in other countries. Like, is America the only country with parks/roadside attractions comprised entirely of life-size, garishly painted, fiberglass dinosaurs?

Did you see the giant ball of string? i wonder where that thing is these days.

Baltimore is also home to the similarly weird Museum of Visionary Art, which tends to make me feel mental ill too (and that's why i like it) after the 3rd floor of "outsider art." Not to mention the museum of dentistry. i can't really stomach it but it sounds right up your alley.

I really wanted to go to the Museum of Visionary Art, but the winter storm sort of short-circuited a lot of plans for that day. A museum of dentistry sounds like the single most terrifying thing ever, far worse than the Mutter or those medieval torture museums scattered across Italy.