The Ultimate List of Wonderfully Specific Museums - Atlas Obscura Lists

The Ultimate List of Wonderfully Specific Museums

Delightfully singular collections, from umbrella covers to pencil sharpeners.

At major museums such as the Louvre or the Metropolitan Museum of Art, visitors can see a whole swath of artifacts relating to diverse pockets of human culture. These museums are not like that. Instead, they tirelessly devote themselves to appreciating one impossibly specific item.

You might wonder, how can a museum sustain an entire collection of bananas? Or dog collars? Or takeaway sushi dishes? Most of these museums grew out of one person’s obsession. By amassing thousands of the same object, their curators do us a great service, revealing unexpected details about the easily overlooked items all around us.