Museums in Strange Places
Museums in Strange Places is a podcast that explores museums as a way to discover a place, whether visiting for the first time or living there. Host Hannah Hethmon visits different museums in each episode, sharing their stories, challenges, and triumphs with museum professionals and volunteers. Season 1 covers museums in Iceland, and Season 2 covers museums in Maryland. The show is no longer active, but past episodes remain available.
Episodes
Trailer: Humanities =
A new podcast from Hannah Hethmon, creator of We the Museum and Museums in Strange Places. Produced for the Federation of State Humanities Councils, Humanities = is a show about real individuals, organizations, and communities making a real difference through the humanities. This show is a production of the Federation of State Humanities Councils. The first three episodes are now availabl
Trailer: We the Museum
I always meant to get back into doing Museum in Strange Places episodes, but producing professionally as Better Lemon Creative Audio and the pandemic got in the way. Now, I'm finally back with a brand new show for museum workers, WE THE MUSEUM. We the Museum is a podcast for museum workers who want to form a more perfect institution. Episodes will feature in-depth conversations with museu
BONUS: The Vagina Museum Podcast Trailer
One of the many projects I've been working on through my new production company (Better Lemon Creative Audio) is a podcast for the Vagina Museum in London. I'm so passionate about the work this museum is doing, and I think you're going to LOVE this podcast. It's written and produced by me with research and narration by science communicator Alyssa Chafee. Guests include big names like Dr.
BONUS: London is Ok I Guess
[A pilot for a new show I developed about living in London. I'm really proud of how it turned out, but I just don't have the time to make more episodes, so it's going to live here on the Museum in Strange Places feed. I meet up with escape room creator, museum professional, and self-proclaimed mermaid hunter Sacha Coward, who takes me somewhere that will inspire me a bit and help me see t
The (Pop-Up) Anti-Trump Museum of Atlantic City
Donald J. Trump has been active in business and media for fifty years, but his scandal-ridden presidency has overshadowed most of his history. Levi Fox's Pop-Up Atlantic City Trump Museum is an attempt to remedy this oversight for one specific chapter of the Trump story: his four Atlantic City casinos and the impact their short tenures and bankruptcies had on the gambling capitol of the E
Poe Belongs to Baltimore, Baltimore to Poe
He’s the master of macabre, the man who created mystery fiction, the face on the socks and beer bottles of everyday Baltimoreans. He’s Edgar Allan Poe, and he belongs to Baltimore. Join me on a visit to the Poe House in Baltimore, the tiny house where his career began, to learn about Baltimore’s devotion to Poe, his tragic life, and the future of his legacy in the city where he died myste
Slavery in Maryland: Facing Our Whole History at Sotterley Plantation
So much of Maryland was built on the back of enslaved Africans, yet it’s easy to avoid confronting the history of slavery in Maryland’s former plantation country. Historic Sotterley is trying to change that. The plantation was built in 1703 by a man who made his money off the slave trade, and the site was witness to 165 continuous years of slavery. Today, staff and descendants at Sotterle
Museum on Main Street: A Love Letter to Small-Town America (02/09)
About half of all museums in the US are in small towns in rural America. Each of these museums holds stories and objects that are worth preserving and sharing, but they don’t always have the funding and infrastructure they need to operate and innovate. That’s where Museum on Main Street comes in. This Smithsonian program brings traveling exhibits to small towns for six weeks at a time. Bu
Baltimore’s Jewish Roots ft. Harry Houdini (S02/E08)
What do Baltimore, Russian Jews, the third oldest synagogue in America, Eastern European Catholics, seances, and Harry Houdini have in common? You’ll find out in this episode, a visit to the Jewish Museum of Maryland, an institution that prioritizes storytelling (and is pretty good at it). Join me for a tour of the historic Lloyd Street Synagogue, a journey back in history to the heyday o
Why We Work: Improving the Way Museums Work at The Baltimore Museum of Industry (S02/E07)
S02/E07: Located in a waterfront 1860s oyster cannery in the Baltimore Harbor, The Baltimore Museum of Industry is trying to inspire and engage their visitors around the concept of work by telling the stories of historical workers. But in order to better fulfill this mission, the museum has to be constantly re-evaluating themselves and their assumptions about work. In this episode, I talk
A Secular Gathering Place: The Sandy Spring Museum (S02/E06)
The Sandy Spring Museum describes itself as “community-activated.” They want to be a secular gathering places, where people of different backgrounds can come together and build a sense of place and belonging. I visit the museum to speak with Executive Director Allison Weiss about the museum’s radically community-driven programming, the Quaker principles built into the museum’s design, and
BONUS: 17th Century Ships are Like Classic Cars
BONUS content from Episode 5, "The Lost City: Historic St. Mary’s City, Maryland." Dr. Regina Faden and I head down to Historic St. Mary's City's Waterfront exhibit, where we board the Maryland Dove, a replica 17th century sailing ship. The ship's Boatswain, Jeremy, talks to us about what it's like working on a historic ship and why old boats are like classic cars. Music in this episod
BONUS: What We Can Learn From Dirt
BONUS content from Episode 5, "The Lost City: Historic St. Mary’s City, Maryland." A brief stop at the active dig site of Historic St. Mary's City's Archeology Field School, where Dr. Travis Parno is guiding students from St. Mary's College in a dig to investigate the site of Maryland's first State House. Dr. Parno also tells me about his ongoing research into early taverns, the powerful
The Lost City: Historic St. Mary’s City, Maryland (S02/E05)
In the early 17th century, 300 English settlers traveled to the new colony of Maryland in search of new opportunities and a place where they could practice their Catholic faith in peace. They built Maryland’s first capital, St. Mary’s City, and their city thrived...until its founders fell from power in England. Soon, St. Mary’s City was abandoned and it’s wooden structures rotted. The cit
BONUS: Baltimore's Ring of Fire
BONUS CONTENT from Episode 4, “Museum Time Machine: The Peale Center.” The Peale Center’s Nancy Proctor shows me the museum’s Ring of Fire, explains the phenomenon of skeuomorphism, and tells me why gas lighting was such a game-changing technology in Baltimore. All the music in this episode is by Outcalls. Find more information on the museum and photos on my website, hhethmon.com. If yo
Museum Time Machine: The Peale Center (S02/E04)
There’s a time machine in downtown Baltimore on Holliday Street. A time machine that will take you back to the origin of public collections of art, history, and science...and then zip you through the present and into the future of museums. The Peale Center, the oldest purpose-built museum space in the US, is starting its third century as a building and its third life as a museum after de
Community Driven, Community-Led: The Prince George’s African American Museum and Cultural Center (S02/E03)
Prince George’s County, Maryland is one of the wealthiest African American communities in the US, a suburban enclave of Black excellence just outside Washington, D.C. But it wasn’t always that way. At the small (but mighty) Prince George’s African American Museum and Cultural Center, the passionate young Executive Director, Maleke Glee, tells me about the history of the area, the museum’s
A Public Housing Utopia: The Greenbelt Museum (S02/E02)
Tucked among other Maryland suburbs outside Washington, D.C., the cute little town of Greenbelt has a surprisingly radical history. It was one of three “green towns” built under the New Deal Era Resettlement Administration, and it was supposed to be a new way of living, a utopia. Was it really a utopia? And how did the model hold up over time? I discover this and more during my visit to t
A Temple to Intuition and Art: The American Visionary Art Museum (S02/E01)
The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland is monument to outsider art, the creative spirit, and the search for truth. Step inside this glittering temple to intuition and inspiration to experience the museum’s marvelous “shows,” each of which comes from the singular mind of the museum’s founder and envisioner, Rebecca Alban Hoffberger. Download Transcript. This episode is sp
Season 2: Museums of Maryland (TRAILER)
In each season of this podcast, I explore a different country, state, or region through its museums. In Season 1, I traveled around Iceland. For season two, I decided to explore my native state of Maryland. I visited 22 of Maryland’s most interesting and unique museums, including America’s first purpose built museum, a historic synagogue, a black history wax museum, a New Deal public hous
The Shark Farm at Bjarnarhöfn (S01/E22)
Iceland has a lot of weird traditional foods, but nothing compares to fermented shark meat. The family at Bjarnarhöfn has been hunting and fermenting shark meat for nearly 400 years, although today they only process bycatch Greenland sharks. Many years ago, the family opened a Shark Museum at the farm to share their traditions and introduce the world to “hákarl”. In this episode, I get an
The Art of Volcanoes (S01/E21)
What would it look like if Indiana Jones was into volcanoes and created a museum in a small Icelandic village? The Volcano Museum in Stykkishólmur displays the art and geological specimens collected by volcanologist Haralður Sigurðsson from around the world during his many decades of exploration and research. I speak to museum manager, Filip Polách—a Czech photographer who fell in love wi
Iceland in Wartime (S01/E20)
Walk into the War and Peace Museum, a small building sitting on a fjord north of Reykjavík, Iceland, and you're instantly transported into another era. Covering every wall are carefully arranged artifacts, photographs, and documents from the WWII years in Iceland. This is Guðjón Sigmundsson's personal collection, and it's full of surprises and uncovered secrets. This episode is sponsored
BONUS: The Making of Eldheimar's Audio Guide
Bonus! I go behind-the-scenes with Locatify's Steinunn Anna Gunnlaugsdóttir to talk about the making of Eldheimar's location-aware audio guide app (E19: Memorial to an Eruption). We chat about how Locatify joined the Eldheimar project, the beacon technology used in Eldheimar, and their new hyper-precise ultra-wideband system for museum apps. Locatify is an Icelandic software company speci
Memorial to an Eruption (S01/E19)
On January 23, 1973, residents of the island town Vestmannaeyjar in Iceland were woken from sleep by the sounds of a huge fissure ripping open the earth. The Eldfell volcanic eruption that followed forced everyone to evacuate the island for six months. By the time the eruption stopped, 400 homes were covered by lava and the rest of the island was covered in ash. In this episode, I hike up
We Always Come Back to Home Island (S01/E18)
No matter what happens on the Westman Islands off Iceland's south coast–invading pirates, mass Mormon exoduses, months-long volcanic eruptions, mysterious diseases, perilous fishing waters–the island people, Eyjamenn, always come back to rebuild and repopulate. That's what makes their home island, Heimaey, so unique. In this episode, I visit the local history museum, Sagnheimar, to hear t
The Penis Museum, Part II ft. John Bodinger de Uriarte (S01/E17)
After visiting the Icelandic Phallological Museum in Episode 16, I still didn't get what all the hype was about. So, I sat down with anthropology professor (and fellow Fulbright grantee) John Bodinger de Uriarte to talk about how the museum plays with our ideas of authority and reality, why gift shops in Reykjavík are "museums of imagined Icelandicness," and more. The song in this epis
The Penis Museum, Part I (S01/E16)
I didn't really want to visit the Icelandic Phallological Museum, so to make it more fun, I invited along my Icelandic museum friend, Sig. Join us as we marvel at massive whale phalluses, question the motivation of human donors to the museum, and try to figure out why everyone loves this weird little museum in Reykjavík so much. (This episode contains many PG-rated mentions of penises, bu
Industry and Nostalgia in Akureyri, Iceland (S01/E15)
For this episode, I'm back in Akureyri to visit The Industry Museum, a small museum formed from the enormous personal collection of one couple, who wanted to document the history of the many successful industries based in the "Capital of North Iceland" in the mid-20th Century. Deputy Director Jóna and I talk about nostalgia and relevance, and she shows me some of her favorite exhibits, in
A Museum of Ordinary Things (S01/E14)
Tucked away in a narrow valley just below the town of Akureyri in North Iceland, Sverrir Hermansson's Museum of Sundry Objects is one eccentric man's spectacular collection of ordinary things. In this episode, I visit this beautiful little museum, get to know Sverrir, and have an experience that changes the way I think about museums. Music in this episode is by the Bagdad Brothers. _____
Finding Iceland's Hidden Women (S01/E13)
In this special episode about women's history in Iceland, I visit the Women's History Archive at the National and University Library of Iceland to speak to Rakel Adolphsdóttir about collecting women's history in Iceland and hunting for the women hidden in Iceland's archival collection. I also chat with the researchers behind the Hinsegin Huldkonur project who are trying to uncover the que
A Flyby of the Icelandic Aviation Museum (S01/E12)
The Icelandic Aviation Museum in Akureyri is filled with great stories: locals crashing a Nazi glider into an open grave, the president's plane enlisted to beat the British in the Cod Wars, and a nineteen year search to find a missing WWII plane that crash landed in a glacier. The museum's Chairman of the board, Hörður Geirsson, gave me an insiders tour and told me more about the Flugsafn
How the Seals are Saving Hvammstangi (S01/E11)
Just off the Ring Road in the north of Iceland, a small town once known for hunting seals has breathed new life into their community with a much more sustainable industry: seal watching. At the Seal Center in Hvammstangi, scientists and museum professionals are working together to study seal life in Iceland and help visitors engage more meaningfully and responsibly with some of Iceland's
Beatle-Town, Iceland: A Visit to the Icelandic Museum of Rock 'n' Roll (S01/E10)
The Icelandic music scene has produced a remarkable number of international stars like Sigur Rós, Björk, Kaleo, the Sugar Cubes, and Of Monsters and Men. You can learn more about them and discover new music at the Icelandic Museum of Rock 'n' Roll. It's a paradise for Icelandic music fans, but it will also impress museum-lovers and professionals with its beautiful exhibits and the near-en
Built with Fish: History Lessons at the Museum of Hafnarfjörður (S01/E09)
How do you keep history fresh at a municipal history museum, even when many people in your audience have lived in that small town their entire lives? How do you best serve your local audience while still offering something interesting for tourists? These are the challenges the Hafnarfjörður Museum is trying to solve. The museum is housed in seven historic buildings in Hafnarfjörður, an ol
Community-Centered Contemporary Art in the Heart of Hafnarfjörður (S01/E08)
How does a contemporary art institution–places that are notoriously elitist–provide a thriving cultural center in a town's that on the periphery of Iceland and the world? The Hafnarborg Centre of Culture and Fine Art is a contemporary art gallery and collection in the heart of downtown Hafnarfjörður, an old port town ten kilometers south of Reykjavík. They take their responsibility as the
Celtic Connections on the Icelandic Coast: A Visit to the Akranes Folk Museum (S01/E07)
Akranes is a coastal town in the southwest region of Iceland with a growing population of about 7,000. They have a unique heritage, as the area was settled in large part by Celts, not Norsemen. The charming Akranes Folk Museum has been around for almost 60 years, and is beginning a large project to revamp their exhibits to better serve the new residents of the area, Icelanders visiting fr
A Family, a Mineral Collection, and a Museum in a Gas Station (S01/E06)
Hafsteinn Thor has always been interested in geology, nature, biology, and philosophy...and acting and directing...and singing and learning new instruments. But when he met his wife's family, he was draw into their decades-old passion for stone and mineral collecting. Last year, he and his father-in-law finally set up a museum with the family's collection...in the gas station of their sma
Keeping the Legacy of a Medieval Legend Alive at Snorrastofa (S01/E05)
I visit the Snorrastofa, a research and cultural center at Reykholt, the farm in southwestern Iceland where the great medieval Icelandic historian and writer Snorri Sturluson built his home, a church, and later a small fortress. Snorrastofa Project Manager Sigrun Guttomsdóttir Þormar and I talk about Snorri's dramatic life, his legacy, and his hot tub, which is still in perfect working co
The Future of History at the Reykjavík City Museum (S01/E04)
I visit the Reykjavík City Museum to talk with Museum Director Guðbrandur Benediktsson about museum mergers, historians as presidents, the state of history in Iceland, and the future of history museums in Reykjavík. The music in this episode is "Humble History Song" by the Icelandic singer/ songwriter Ceasetone. ________ Museums in Strange Places is a podcast about Icelandic museums and
A Writer's Home: Gljúfrasteinn-Laxness Museum (S01/E03)
In this episode, I drive thirty minutes outside of Reykjavík to visit Gljúfrasteinn, the museum–and former home–of Halldór Laxness, writer and Nobel laureate. His remarkable life spanned almost the entire 20th century, from 1902 to 1998. He published his first novel at 17 and would go on to publish more than 60 books in his lifetime, mostly novels, but also volumes of poetry and short sto
The Icelandic Punk Museum in Reykjavík, Iceland (S01/E02)
I descend into the historic city public toilets of downtown Reykjavík to check out one of the newer museums in town, the Icelandic Punk Museum. You know it's legit because Johnny Rotten himself presided over the opening in 2016. In a town with it's fair share of tourist traps, this space is no gimmick. The museum was created by punks and music scholars who manage to hit just the right
Bonus Ep: What Makes an Open Air Museum Memorable?
I continue my conversation with Sigurlaugur Ingólfsson at the Árbær Open Air Museum in Reykjavík. We discuss what makes an open air museum visit memorable, whether admission prices motivate museums to stay fresh and engaging, and why we have to think about museums like businesses (sometimes). Music for this episode created by soandso. Used here with permission from the artist. _________
Árbær Open Air Museum in Reykjavík, Iceland
I visit the Árbær Open Air Museum in Reykjavík to interview the Árbær Museum Project Manager, Sigurlaugur Ingólfsson. In this episode you'll learn about: open air/living history museums in Iceland, museum mergers, tourists vs. locals, Vikings, and why it's blasphemy to visit Siglufjörður and *not* visit the Herring Era Museum. _________ Museums in Strange Places is a podcast about Iceland
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