America has museums devoted to priceless art, ancient civilizations, scientific breakthroughs, and the defining moments of human history. It also has a building filled with thousands of pencil sharpeners and another dedicated to the little sleeves that come with umbrellas.
These museums celebrate subjects so ordinary, obscure, or strangely specific that it is hard to believe anyone created an entire attraction around them. Some are delightfully ridiculous, others are unexpectedly impressive, and all 12 are guaranteed to make visitors ask the same question: There’s a museum for that?
Paul A. Johnson Pencil Sharpener Museum
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Most museums ask visitors to admire paintings, fossils, or historic artifacts. This tiny Ohio museum asks them to admire roughly 5,000 pencil sharpeners. The collection ranges from ordinary desk models to sharpeners shaped like animals, buildings, and household objects, proving that even the most forgettable school supply can become a life’s work if somebody saves enough of them.
Umbrella Cover Museum
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This Maine museum is not devoted to umbrellas. It celebrates the little fabric sleeves people usually lose five minutes after buying one. The collection includes umbrella covers from around the world, and its cheerful mission is to find wonder in everyday objects. It may be the only museum where the main attraction is technically packaging.
Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum
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Gatlinburg is home to a museum packed with more than 20,000 sets of salt and pepper shakers. The displays include animals, presidents, foods, vehicles, and almost every novelty shape imaginable. It is an impressive collection, although visitors may leave wondering why humanity has spent so much creative energy designing tiny containers for two seasonings.
Kansas Barbed Wire Museum
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Barbed wire seems like one of those inventions that needs about 30 seconds of explanation. Kansas found enough material for an entire museum. The collection includes more than 2,000 varieties, fencing tools, historical exhibits, and a Barbed Wire Hall of Fame. Apparently, the difference between one sharp strand of metal and another can sustain a surprisingly serious hobby.
National Mustard Museum
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The National Mustard Museum in Wisconsin houses thousands of jars, bottles, and tins from across the United States and dozens of countries. Visitors can trace mustard history, inspect unusual labels, and sample flavors in the museum shop. Admission is free, which feels appropriate for a place dedicated to answering mustard questions most people never thought to ask.
SPAM Museum
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Minnesota has an entire museum devoted to the canned meat that has inspired breakfasts, military rations, regional recipes, and countless jokes. The free attraction covers SPAM’s history and global popularity through colorful interactive exhibits. Tours may even be led by staff known as SPAMbassadors, a job title that sounds invented but is somehow completely real.
Museum of Clean
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A museum about cleaning sounds like a closet full of antique mops. Idaho’s Museum of Clean is actually a massive complex filled with vacuums, washing machines, brooms, toilets, and exhibits about hygiene and the broader idea of clean living. The premise is wonderfully mundane, but the scale turns it into one of the strangest genuinely ambitious museums in the country.
National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum
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Milwaukee has a Hall of Fame for collectibles whose defining feature is that their heads wobble. Tens of thousands of bobbleheads fill the displays, covering sports stars, politicians, mascots, celebrities, and fictional characters. The collection is enormous, colorful, and just a little unsettling when an entire wall appears to nod at the same time.
American Toby Jug Museum
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Toby jugs are ceramic pitchers shaped like seated people, while character jugs focus on a person’s head and shoulders. If that distinction was missing from your life, this Illinois museum can fix it. Thousands of expressive ceramic faces line the galleries, turning an obscure corner of pottery collecting into a spectacle that is equal parts craftsmanship and crowded dinner-party nightmare.
Lunchbox Museum
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A collection in Columbus, Georgia, preserves thousands of lunchboxes and thermoses decorated with superheroes, cartoons, musicians, television shows, and movie characters. The subject sounds trivial until the displays become a timeline of American pop culture. It is also a reminder that generations of children carried miniature advertisements to school alongside their sandwiches.
Vent Haven Museum
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Kentucky’s Vent Haven Museum is devoted entirely to ventriloquism, with hundreds of figures, photographs, scripts, and props. The history is fascinating, but the sight of row after row of wooden faces can feel like the opening scene of a horror movie. Few museums offer a better mix of show-business history and the suspicion that the exhibits are watching you.
Matchstick Marvels Museum
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Iowa’s Matchstick Marvels Museum displays enormous models built from ordinary wooden matchsticks. The subjects include famous buildings, ships, and fantasy landmarks assembled from hundreds of thousands of tiny pieces. The idea sounds like an unusually patient craft project, but the finished structures are so intricate that this may be the rare museum on the list that earns its punchline and then completely overturns it.
