Miniaturize This

As far as museum galleries go, the square footage of the room is miniature too.

After a recent stint of lazy Sundays, I found myself scouring the web for a low-cost use of time in St. Louis.  What I discovered was the quickest non-surgical way to eliminate anyone’s underlying Napoleon complex.  It comes in the form of the Miniature Museum of St. Louis.  It’s the perfect getaway for anyone that enjoys light switches, complex dollhouses, or the view from a voyeuristic giant’s eyes.  Check.  Check. And double check!  Three of my favorite pastimes all under one roof!

Editors Note: Lucky museum-goers, like myself, might even be treated to the thrill of accidentally walking into the restricted area and see the employee on security camera duty partaking in an early Sunday afternoon miller time.  I badly wanted to join in but wasn't sure on this museum's policy on customer/employee alcohol interaction.

Typically, museums exist on some level to place their customers in a place of smallness and insignificance.  The Mona Lisa causes one to wonder, “will anything I ever accomplish, make people want to travel across the globe just for a brief peek from behind a protective glass.”  Dinosaur fossil replicas, like Sue the T. Rex, lets you envision life at the bottom of the food chain (or what life was like for Rick Moranis’ shrunken children).  The miniature museum spins this paradigm on it’s head, and gives the viewer an insight into the world of Gulliver staring down on the lives of the plastic figurine Lilliputians for the reasonable price of $5.

 

Exhibits ranged from large-scale houses like the haunted mansion, to replicas like the Bevo Mill restaurant, to small dioramas just a step or two above the old shoebox and ninja turtle action figures ones that I made for first and second grade projects.  While I’m on the topic of that diorama sentence you just read, I must say, a quick google search on the topic brought up some pretty spectacular life-size dioramas that are being built out there.  There are dioramas that make great use of perspective, dioramas that make great use of lighting displays, and even dioramas that make great use of wolves.  A whole bevy of diorama information can be found at http://fuckyeahdioramas.tumblr.com/ because that is a real web site that I did not just make up, and that kind of enthusiasm about artificially constructed three-dimensional scenes has to be celebrated.

Each display at the museum comes outfitted with a user-controlled lighting display to shine a light on the scene.  These switches are not to be trusted.  They would often turn on with ease, but clicking the light off often proved difficult.  It was disclaimed the lights would shut off automatically after they deemed themselves out of use.  But the lingering lighted display seemed like a desperate last-ditch call from the miniature to entice the viewer back for one more look before heading back into a cruel world filled with regularly-sized items.

 

Smaller displays like the one pictured to the right, plastered the walls of the museum.  While this particular display doesn’t have the size and intricacies of the other miniatures, it still has plenty of  merits, and for a non-miniaturist what looks like a world of frustration in the production process.  

This was the “Rock & Roll Room”, which attracted me despite the very un-rock and roll font choice on the title card.  Arranging all the miniature musical trinkets in such a tiny place requires a surgeon’s hand and a designer's eye.   However, the design to this particular piece does give me a few reservations.

I’m going to make an educated guess the miniaturist who created this piece had no idea what rock and roll is other than something the kids were bopping to back in the day.  It appears as though they admire Gun’s and Roses, or at the very least were able to find pictures of them without any trouble.  But why the inclusion of all the brass instruments?  Did I miss the face-melting tuba solo in “Paradise City”? 

Or how about the “influential” rock albums covering the wall?  I don’t recall reading anywhere about the influence Dolly Parton and the Dirty Dancing soundtrack had on a young Axl Rose.  If I’m being completely honest, I would pay many shekels to see a Gun’s and Roses reunion show where they had to make do playing Dolly’s “Jolene” with all the instruments included in this exhibit.

 

Damnnnnnnnnnn.  This haunted mansion is killer (sorry for that lame joke).  It scares me to think my best effort today would still be the old shoebox/action figure display.

Oh. Hey there vampire with Nicolas Cage face syndrome.

Good to note here that all the displays in the museum are donations, and this haunted house by Drew Hunter deserves some name recognition.

 

This two signs detailed the contagious nature of miniaturism as well as an itemized description of who a miniaturist is.  Do any of these symptoms affect one of your loved one's?  Probably not.  But my favorite highlights include "Has an attention span of 23 minutes for spring cleaning, and 6 hours and 49 minutes for making a miniature." - Those are oddly specific time measurements, and holy hell that's the time frame for one miniature.  Impressive.  "Has trouble operating a can opener, but can turn out 48 identical spindles on a mini lathe." - Nope.  No idea what that sentence means.  "Can't think of any ways to serve leftovers, but knows three uses for sawdust." - Is one of those uses for grade-school janitors to sprinkle it on vomit?

There are minimalist miniature scenes...

...and there are more active scenes. So a horse walks into a bar...

Finally, there was one exhibit that requires a deeper look.  It is titled "The Immaculate Deception," and is the far-and-away winner of the "Creativity Award."  But also winner of the "Most Confusing and Strange and Guess the Clinical Diagnosis Award."  The basic premise of the piece focuses on the awkward explanation every family faces to a child's query of where babies come from.  Obviously the answer involves, not just storks and the birds and the bees, but a "nun"-sense mixture in the baby garden.  I could try and explain more, but the pictures tell it better.  There are some highlights to keep an eye out for including the twins, the baby "breaching" on the cabbage patch, and the likely horrifying use of puppy tails.

If only my laundromat offered free delivery service via bird.

What are the puppy tails for? What are the puppy tails for? What's in the box?

What the hell are these birds and bees doing if babies come from sugar, spice, and everything nice?

And.....this clinches it.  This display is completely bonkers, yet completely awesome.

At their core, hobbies provide enjoyment - a distraction from the mundane and bigger challenges of daily life.  In this way, miniaturists chose the most logical and fulfilling use of free time.  So, in honor of the beer-toting employee of the miniature museum, here's to the miniaturists and their quest to conquer the minuscule, so the rest of us don't have to.  Also, mark your calendars now, the World Federation of Miniaturists will be held next in South Africa in 2016, book your trips now.

Recommended Songs for the Next Installment of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: "Short People" - Randy Newman, "Tiny Dancer" - Elton John, "I Wish" - Skee-lo, "I'm Nothing" - Violent Femmes, "Rattlesnake Highway" - Palma Violets - no real reason other than this song came through on my iTunes shuffle and it's good stuff.