THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ODDITIES
"My museum is about the ephemeral and the nearly invisible... it is as much about the states of mind, memories and feelings as it is about the objects in the world around us. My passion is to deny boundaries rather than create them"
Constantin Fripp, founder of the Museum of Modern Oddities
What makes an object valuable? Putting it in a museum is one way. By their nature, museums accord items a certain value by deeming them worthy of being put on display and subsequently aiding in their preservation.
The first Museum of Modern Oddities in Australia premiered at the new Melbourne Museum in 2000. There MoMO was presented in 60 suitcases by Melbourne artists Kathy Bowman and Neil Thomas. MoMO is currently inhabiting an old hardware shop in Collingwood where it will remain until mid-November before moving on and manifesting elsewhere.
Although the settings and presentation change with each manifestation of MoMO, the basic ethos remains the same. It is a place where the ordinary becomes the extraordinary, a musuem without walls where beauty is found in the mundane, where pricelessness is all in the perspective. A celebration of the peculiar.
