Niche Museums

November 27, 2019 10:43 PM

Niche Museums
I love visiting tiny or niche museums. I've started posting one museum I've explored every day to my new website, and I plan to keep doing so for as long as I can find new niche museums to explore. Since there are more than 30,000 museums in just the USA I'm hoping this will keep me going for a very long time. Hit the "Use my location" button to see niche museums I've visited near you!

Role: Creator

posted by simonw (13 comments total)

If you're interested in the technical details about how the site works, I wrote about it on my blog.
posted by simonw at 11:43 PM on November 27, 2019

I love this, however I can't find your RSS feed. Can you point me to it, or add one if it doesn't exist?
posted by COD at 6:21 AM on November 28, 2019

Oh that's a great idea. I started work on an Atom plugin for Datasette a. Lille of months about but didn't quite get it working, I should finish that!
posted by simonw at 7:39 AM on November 28, 2019

I'm still working on the Atom feed (see issue #5) but I do have a Twitter account for the site now: @nichemuseums
posted by simonw at 8:00 PM on November 29, 2019

OK, the atom feed is now live! It's linked to from the homepage. Here's the datasette-atom plugin I built for it.
posted by simonw at 11:09 PM on November 29, 2019 [1 favorite]

Thanks! I am subscribed to the Atom feed.
posted by COD at 5:57 AM on November 30, 2019

This is really cool! Extra thanks for getting the RSS feed together--added to my reader as well.
posted by youarenothere at 9:28 AM on December 3, 2019

You visited all these museums? That’s impressive
posted by growabrain at 9:15 PM on December 5, 2019

And so many more... it's a hobby I picked up a few years ago when I realized that there's a museum about basically everything, and they're everywhere once you know to look for them. Just try searching for "museums" on Google Maps and see how many come up in your local area that you didn't know about.
posted by simonw at 8:31 AM on December 7, 2019 [2 favorites]

I loved this. I actually visited Bourton-On-the-Water and spent an hour at the model village. On the way from Stratford-Upon-Avon to Bath, we spent the better part of a day stopping at lovely villages in the Cotswolds, and this was our last stop before lunch. Our tour guide mentioned that the best part of it was that there was a Bourton-On-the-Water model IN the Bourton-On-the-Water model, and indeed it was nifty.

I also love niche museums, and since so many of these are in the UK, I only wish I'd known about your site then. FWIW, Chattanooga has a guitar museum, a towing museum, a railroad museum, and a bunch of less quirky venues. Thanks for making this.
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 9:49 PM on December 13, 2019 [2 favorites]

Oh, and if you ever get to the Amalfi Coast in Italy, especially on a hot day, it's worth a visit to the paper museum!
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 9:51 PM on December 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

I didn't know I liked niche museums, but after looking at your blog, I decided i was wrong. There are several in your initial offerings that I have made a mental note to visit if I ever am nearby. I will have to start looking for them when I travel. Thanks.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 12:26 PM on December 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

That's so great to hear, thanks!

I'm particularly proud of yesterday's entry, about the stone circles made of Spanish monastery pieces hidden in Golden Gate Park: Monarch Bear Grove.
posted by simonw at 1:27 PM on December 16, 2019 [1 favorite]