Museum Props Are Fun

As much as I enjoy museums frequently on a cerebral and academic level, I'm still a visitor and I still try to see things from that perspective. There are some almost "guilty pleasures" I find myself clapping with glee over - I'm quite partial to dioramas large and small, discovery centres, love a good dress up and play with props, and I certainly enjoy hands-on-artefacts bits! But one of my most favourite things to find in a museum are hilarious mannequins. Usually there to illustrate costumes or historic scenes, but I generally find them awkward and hilarious. I think it's because there's an effort put in to make them look real or human but it's a difficult thing to achieve - perhaps making their faces/poses featureless would make them a more neutral prop to illustrate artefacts and scenes with. But let's not get into that too much!

When I added my Flickr ticker down on the right-hand side of my blog there I wondered how I could make it just the museum set, and then remembered I have a specific tag for my guilty pleasure - 'hilarious museum mannequins'. I'm slowly but surely collecting them, which you can see here - and here's a prime example of one I found recently at Stirling Castle:



I hope to gather more in my travels and add to my unique tag. Do any of you have favourite fun or crazy things about museums that you get excited about when visiting? Or is it just me...?