Do you find that you are intrigued by the obscure? Enjoy walking the line between strange and beautiful? Does the dark idea of death visit your dreams? If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, you should take a visit to this edgy, almost subversive spot in Gowanus: the Morbid Anatomy Museum [424-A 3rd Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11215].
The first floor has a café and giftshop. Grab a cup of coffee and take in the carefully selected details. They have picked the perfect books, trinkets, and artwork to line the shop and set the stage. If my apartment had a darker theme, I would love the framed spider web (but really all I have is bird artwork).
Somehow, the taxidermy rodents in a pink convertible or on an amusement park ride just worked down here.
When you’re ready to head upstairs, you’ll find a whole new collection of curiosities, the museum hosts a rotating array of exhibits. On my visit Opus Hypnagogia: Sacred Spaces of the Visionary and Vernacular.
What exactly does that mean, I wondered? My friend was actually knowledgeable on the subject – the space between wakefulness and sleeping which leaves room for lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis. Very curious. So in a wide open gallery space there were excerpts from writing and all different sorts of artworks. Motifs running from visionary animals,
to dancing with the devil,
and really some things just plain uncategorizable.
There was a little side room filled with an even stranger yet menagerie of objects.
Now, there’s something even wilder on display, I might have to visit again to see the taxidermy kittens’ wedding. Stay weird.