The grand courtyard of the National Building Museum, Washington, D.C. Credit: Gregory McNamee. All rights reserved.
Like many travel buffs, I am a collector of unusual places—those venues, usually in or near small towns off forgotten highways, but sometimes in the middle of world capitals (as with Rome’s National Museum of Pasta Foods) where you can see such things as the world’s largest mining truck (Fernie, British Columbia, bids for the title) or the world’s deepest hand-dug well (likely Orvieto, Italy, though Greensburg, Kansas, claims the honor, too). From time to time, we’ll highlight a few of these places and the museums, sometimes single-purpose but sometimes broad-ranging, that commemorate them.
The National Building Museum
The National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. might seem an odd choice to include in a list of off-the-beaten-path venues: after all, it’s a standout in a city of museums, second only to New York in the United States, and it lies within an easy walk of such heavily visited sites as the White House and the Washington Monument. Yet, in its splendid home inside a restored federal office building whose historic core was designed by Mongomery Meigs—the architect, as it were, of the Arlington National Cemetery as well—the National Building Museum is comparatively little visited.
That seems a shame, not least because its exhibits, devoted to the arts of architecture and urban design, are so fascinating, and its very intent so Jeffersonian. But even were the NBM as packed as, say, the Air and Space Museum on the National Mall, the crowd would be lost inside the vastness of the central courtyard, which is a true sight to behold. As a bonus, the museum also houses what many cognoscenti consider to be the best museum shop in the country.
The Clyfford Still Museum
The Clyfford Still Museum, Denver, Colorado. From left to right, the paintings are PH–118 (1947), PH–272 (1950), and PH–605 (1950), all oil on canvas. © Clyfford Still Estate. Credit: Gregory McNamee. All rights reserved.
Clyfford Still was an Abstract Expressionist painter twice removed: that is to say, he was an exponent of an artistic movement that had come to the United States by way of German inspiration by way of New York, where most of its practitioners on this side of the water lived. Still, though, lived most of his days in faraway places such as North Dakota, California, and Maryland, where he spent his last years. His estate offered a grand but fraught bargain: If a city were to devote a museum entirely and exclusively to Still’s work, then that city would receive his archive; otherwise, it would be sealed. Denver, Colorado, already boasting a fine public art museum and one of the best public library systems in the country, offered a site, and in November 2011 the Clyfford Still Museum opened. Located just across the street from the Denver Art Museum in an area of downtown that is steadily being remade for some future vision of the city, the museum contains some 2,400 of Still’s works. It’s interesting on its own terms as an architectural artifact as well.
The Brown County Agricultural Museum, Hiawatha, Kansas. Credit: Gregory McNamee. All rights reserved.
The Brown County Agricultural Museum
Everywhere I go out on the back roads these days, it seems, I find a new farm museum. One of the most interesting I’ve yet seen is not far from the exact geographic center of the lower forty-eight states, in the small, handsome town of Hiawatha, Kansas. I first traveled there years ago to see the Davis Memorial, a curious group of statues surrounding a family tomb that depicted the changing life of a long-married couple over several decades. The memorial is a great piece of Americana, and so, too, is the long line of windmills that stretches out just across the road, filling the horizon above fields of wheat, corn, and sunflowers.
The National Mustard Museum, Middleton, Wisconsin. Credit: Gregory McNamee. All rights reserved.
The Brown County Agriculture Museum is a petting zoo of such windmills, more than forty of them arrayed along the appropriately named Windmill Lane, all in perfect working order. In addition, the museum houses dozens of old tractors, engines, and farm contraptions of every kind. Find your way there, just fifty miles or so from the coast-to-coast interstate highway to the south, and you’ll practically be able to watch the years roll back—a very neat trick indeed. The museum is open from 10:00 to 4:00 Monday through Friday, and it’s well worth a visit.
The National Mustard Museum
Finally, there’s the National Mustard Museum in Middleton, Wisconsin, not far from Madison. A museum devoted to mustard, you say? Well, mustard is an essential accompaniment to bratwurst, which figures prominently in the Wisconsonian diet.
Moreover, it’s an object of affection for the collector who has assembled it since 1986, gathering more than five thousand specimens of the condiment from around the world. Suffice it to say that if you, too, are a fan of the spicy stuff, then you’ll want to visit.