International Museums Museum
Destroyed in 2000 during the Big Fucking Fire that ravaged Pittsburgh, the International Museums Museum is the only museum dedicated to famous museums.
Funded through a rider attached onto an "End Kitten Huffing Now" bill by PA congressman Arlen Specter, the museum was built in 1996. One of the more unique features of the museum's architecture is that it was built to look exactly like a typical museum, the exterior closely mimicking the gravitas museums emanate, along with the interior, which was meticulously crafted to best recreate the museum experience, right down to weekly "raids" of museum exhibits by paid actors.
The museum featured multiple wings, each dedicated to a specific nugget of the history of museums.
The First Museums[edit]
This wing contained exhibits on the earliest museums, which first appeared in Ancient Egypt around Aincient Egyptian times. The main attraction of this wing is a stone tablet inscribed "Do Not Touch Exhibit" [transl.] from the very first museum, which was excavated in Egypt buried beneath a mound of mummified pharaohs. It is believed the sign was used to warn visitors of the museum to not touch a vase from the Ancienter Egyptian era, which was also recovered, but no one cares about.
Also housed within this wing was a popular exhibit on the first museum audio tour, which first appeared in Rome. The stone cassettes and players were carried by household slaves. In Roman culture, guided audio tours of museums were viewed as a small step toward achieving arete, or absolute perfection.
Art Museums[edit]
This wing was all about famous art museums. It had within it the velvet ropes that once separated Louvre visitors from the Mona Lisa, and a t-shirt that reads "Yo miro Las Meninas y todos recibo es ese camiseta teriblé" from the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain. There was also a very popular picture of an empty room where Michelangelo's David statue was once displayed.
The art wing of the IMM also featured, not at all ironically, art. There are some wonderful paintings of the frames used for Van Gogh's Starry Night and Dali's Man I am Fucking STONED... Look at Those Clocks!. There was a statue carved to resemble the exact glass case used to protect Da Vinci's Mona Lisa.
Sports Museums[edit]
A wing dedicated to famous sports museums, this wing featured mostly memorabilia from the Baseball Hall of Fame gift shop. One of the more popular displays is a two-room feature on the last guy to visit the Bowling Hall of Fame in 1989. The man stopped in to use the bathroom and promptly left.
Keeping in sports museum tradition, a museum could only be enshrined once it was voted on by a committee of sports museum enthusiasts. There was plenty of debate. Some complained that the Texas Sports Museum was enshrined, while the NCAA Hockey Hall of Fame was not despite superior stats. These people had no lives, which was a requirement to be on the committee.
At-Home Museums[edit]
A wing dedicated to people who ran museums out of their own home. You know that guy at work who has this one room in his house filled with nothing but old Hooters t-shirts? He was probably in there. Yuh noe he was havin sum fun in there wiht all dem hooters!!???!
Museum Museums[edit]
An unfinished wing that was devoted to museums around the world dedicated to cataloguing and preserving museums dedicated to museums. The International Museums Museum burned down before this wing could ever be completed.
Museum curator Rick Santorum had to say on the tragic day: "Aggghhhhhhh FUCK! No! No! Shit! No! Awwww... man, just, fuck, just... FUCK, man... not cool. Not cool." uhhggg