The United States is home to museums that cater to all kinds of tastes. Jonesing for vintage Pez dispensers? Check out the Burlingame Museum of PEZ Memorabilia. (How can we ever forget this priceless clip from ‘Seinfeld’ about the pleasures of Pez?) For conspiracy theorists, there’s the International UFO Museum & Research Center located in, naturally, Roswell, N.M. (where in 1947 UFO materials were supposedly recovered and the military was subsequently accused of a cover-up). And, for the penal-minded, there’s the Sing Sing Prison Museum in Ossining, N.Y., which offers a picture of life in the “big house.”
Name a subject matter and it’s a pretty good bet there is a museum dedicated to it (the Rice Museum, the Devil’s Rope Museum, we can go on). However, in a sports-obsessed culture such as ours there’s never been a sports museum. Until now.
Transcending the generations, the museum offers a tasty blend of analog media and digital media (along with a healthy sprinkling of U.S. history).
Of course, the museum includes countless gems of the traditional variety: tons of vintage uniforms and jerseys; a drawing by Muhammad Ali that predicts his knockout of Sonny Liston (and Ali’s ascension to heavyweight boxing champion) and the American flag that goalie Jim Craig draped over his shoulder after the U.S. hockey team’s stunning upset of the Soviet Union during the 1980 Winter Olympics. (The museum, which has partnerships with dozens of sports organizations throughout North America, is also home to the Billie Jean King International Women’s Sports Center.)
But the museum has also taken pains to create exhibits that allow people to participate (as opposed to being passive). It has 24 interactive exhibits and touch screens and 19 themed galleries in every major sport. I especially liked the ‘Quick Hands’ exhibit, which tests your defensive skills in basketball, and doing a mock play-by-play of the Big Game (football) in 1982, when U.C. Berkeley trounced Stanford.
Climb on a stationary bike and try to generate the speed of professional cyclists (good luck) or test your knowledge of football in an application called “You Make the Call.” The museum has so much to offer that it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that going for a visit earns you a pretty solid workout, both physically and mentally.
The above video on the Sports Museum of America includes some insightful comments from one of its interactive gurus on what other museums need to do to take advantage of an increasingly digital age. Otherwise, we might be looking at a future in which we have museums about museums.
