Museum celebrates all things nonsensical
Print Edition
FROM a transparent suitcase for nudists to automatic nose pickers — Austria’s museum of nonsense and its vast collection of silly yet brilliant inventions are proof that bad ideas, if carried out well, can turn into genius creations.
The so-called Nonseum, which claims to be the only one of its kind in the world, has a cult following.
Every year, thousands of people flock to the small village of Herrnbaumgarten, tucked away in the northern wine region close to the Czech border, to find comic relief at the Nonseum.
“We get groups from far-flung places like China and South Korea, and although I sometimes worry that the puns won’t necessarily translate into another language, they do laugh, so clearly there’s something universal about what we show,” said Susanne Machac, one of the museum’s co-managers.
Her brother-in-law, sculptor Fritz Gall, co-founded the Nonseum in 1994 with four other local artists. They got the idea after organizing the country’s first fair of failed inventions in 1984, which was an unexpected success.
Sleepy Herrnbaumgarten, usually home to about 970 people, was suddenly overrun by 5,000 visitors from across Austria and beyond, who had all come to chuckle at the unsuccessful gimmicks.
Gall and his friends realized they had uncovered a market niche — coming up with pointless inventions.
Today, the museum has hundreds of pieces.
They include a soup plate with a plug, which allows you to drain the food when you’ve had enough, and “the world’s one and only collection of famous button holes.”
“This is the third button hole from the top of Napoleon’s military vest,” said Machac with a serious face, pointing to a little square box with a transparent lid.
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