Tag: museums

  • Computer History Museum

    Situated roughly between downtown Mountain View and Google’s corporate campus is the Computer History Museum. I had a chance to visit for the first time the other day. The museum’s main gallery — which is quite large — begins with the abacus, and ends more or less at the modern day. As if to drive…

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  • Dallas Museum of Art

    Located in the middle of downtown Dallas, the Dallas Museum of Art is a free art museum with pieces from a wide variety of places, styles, and time periods. It includes everything from works by Picasso to a large Hindu shrine. And there’s even a mummy. This scattershot approach provides a taste of a lot,…

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  • The Mob Museum

    Located in an old courthouse building in Downtown Las Vegas, The Mob Museum tells the story of the mafia in America. It’s a story that most Americans are at least somewhat familiar with, but how often do you learn about it in a museum setting rather than from a secondhand story in a movie? After…

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  • Haas-Lilienthal House

    A block away from Lafayette Park in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood is the Haas-Lilienthal House, a well-preserved 19th century Queen Anne Victorian home. Today the house is a museum of sorts. I took the tour earlier today. The only way to see the interior is on this tour, which takes around an hour. The…

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  • The Broad

    My final stop on this trip to Los Angeles was The Broad (pronounced more like “The Brode”) a free modern art museum financed by the wealthy Broad family. The museum’s main gallery is on the top and third floor, which unfortunately was the only part I had time to visit before heading to the airport.…

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  • LACMA and the La Brae Tar Pits

    I left the Hollywood History tour a little tired, but decided to soldier on via an LA Metro bus to see LACMA and the La Brae Tar Pits next door. I should point out in advance I didn’t pay to enter either museum; LACMA’s main gallery is currently being rebuilt, and the La Brae Tar…

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  • Museum of International Propaganda

    My last stop in downtown San Rafael was a tiny museum with an unusual premise: the Museum of International Propaganda. Housed in a former shoe store, each section of the museum is devoted to a certain type of propaganda. Examples include leader worship, promoting the military, and demonizing a perceived enemy. It seemed to me…

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  • Natural History Museum of Utah

    On the University of Utah’s campus is the Natural History Museum of Utah. The focus of the museum is entirely on Utah’s geography, climate, and living beings from the time of single celled organisms up until the Ute people lived in the area. The museum’s current location is in a building completed in 2011, relatively…

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  • The Art Institute of Chicago

    One block south of Millennium Park is a stately looking building housing the Art Institute of Chicago, an art museum with a vast collection of pieces from all over the world. From the street you might think it’s a small museum, but you’d be wrong. The building visible from the street is largely a facade;…

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  • Driehaus Museum

    Originally built as a second home for the wealthy east coast Nickerson family, today the Driehaus Museum focuses on home life in the Gilded Age of America. I realize that’s a lot of description crammed into one sentence so let’s break it down. Sam Nickerson and his wife built their Chicago mansion about a decade…

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