Established | 1976 |
---|---|
Location | Mecca, California |
Coordinates | 33°31′42″N115°56′36″W / 33.528350°N 115.943433°W |
Curator | Fred Garbutt |
Website | internationalbananamuseum |
The International Banana Museum was a museum located in Mecca, California, dedicated to the banana. [1] The one-room museum contained more than 20,000 items related to bananas. [1] In 1999, the museum set a Guinness World Record as the largest museum devoted to a single fruit. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the museum stated it would close. [2] As of August 2023, it remained closed. [3]
In 1972, Kenneth Bannister was a president of a photographic equipment manufacturing company, and at a manufacturers' conference, he handed out thousands of Chiquita banana stickers. [1] [4] [5] His joke was that since the banana was shaped like a smile, it might encourage people to do so. [1]
Encouraged by the positive response, Bannister created the International Banana Club and was designated as the "Top Banana". [1] He started receiving banana-related items in the mail, but began to run out of room for all of them. [4] [5] He founded the museum in 1976. [1]
The International Banana Club and Museum operated in Altadena in a rented building. [1] [4] [5] [6] The Banana Club grew to 35,000 members in 17 countries. [4] Donating a banana-related item to the museum would enable one to join the Banana Club, with a nickname and ability to earn "banana merit points", and obtain a degree in "Bananistry". President Ronald Reagan was a member of the club. [1]
In 2005, Bannister relocated the museum to a rent-free city-owned space in Hesperia. [4] [6] However, in 2010, the Hesperia Recreation and Park District wanted the museum to move out to make room for a new exhibit. [6] Bannister placed the entire collection on eBay for $45,000. [4] [6] He lowered the price to $7,500 [4] and in 2010, Fred Garbutt bought the collection for an undisclosed amount, moving it to Mecca, California, and becoming the new curator. It was reported that Bannister had agreed to a purchase price below $7,500. [1] [5]
In 1999, the museum won a Guinness World Record as the largest museum devoted to a single fruit. At the time, it held a collection of 17,000 items. [4] [6] [7] [8]
The collection included kitschy items such as a "banana couch, banana soda, gold-plated banana, banana boogie board, and banana ears". [5] The museum housed the only petrified banana in the world, which came from the closet of a girl in Kentucky. [1] [6] The museum was family-friendly, despite a history of people sending in lewd objects. [1] [4] [5]
There was also a Banana Bar that served banana-related food and drinks. [1] [7]
Guinness World Records, known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as The Guinness Book of Records and in previous United States editions as The Guinness Book of World Records, is a British reference book published annually, listing world records both of human achievements and the extremes of the natural world. The brainchild of Sir Hugh Beaver, the book was co-founded by twin brothers Norris and Ross McWhirter in Fleet Street, London, in August 1955.
The Museo Egizio or Egyptian Museum is an archaeological museum in Turin, Italy, specializing in Egyptian archaeology and anthropology. It houses one of the largest collections of Egyptian antiquities, with more than 30,000 artifacts, and is considered the second most important Egyptological collection in the world, after the Egyptian Museum of Cairo. In 2019, it received 853,320 visitors, making it one of the most visited museums in Italy.
Dole plc is an Irish-American agricultural multinational corporation headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. The company is among the world's largest producers of fruit and vegetables, operating with 38,500 full-time and seasonal employees who supply some 300 products in 75 countries. Dole reported 2021 revenues of $6.5 billion.
The Shanghai Art Museum was an art museum in the city of Shanghai, China. In October 2012, the museum was rebranded as the China Art Museum when it moved to the China pavilion at Expo 2010 on the former Shanghai Expo 2010 lands. The Shanghai Art Museum building is the former clubhouse building of the Shanghai Race Club. It sits on the western edge of People's Park, north of People's Square, which was once the Shanghai race course. The Shanghai Art Museum was the original home of the Shanghai Biennale, founded in 1996 by Fang Zengxian, then director of the museum. The former museum building is being converted to house the Shanghai History Museum, which had been left without a home due to redevelopment since 1999.
Stephen J. Sansweet is the chairman and former president of Rancho Obi-Wan, a nonprofit museum that houses the world's largest collection of Star Wars memorabilia.
The American Jazz Museum is located in the historic 18th and Vine district of Kansas City, Missouri. The museum preserves the history of American jazz music, with exhibits on Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and others. Nested within the museum is a fully functioning jazz club, The Blue Room, which holds live performances multiple nights a week.
The Cavern Mecca was a Beatles museum in Liverpool. Founded in 1981 and named for the Cavern Club, it was instrumental in the birth of Beatles fan-based tourism in Liverpool. It was located on the corner of Rainford Square and Mathew Street.
In political science, the term banana republic describes a politically and economically unstable country with an economy dependent upon the export of natural resources. In 1904, American author O. Henry coined the term to describe Guatemala and Honduras under economic exploitation by U.S. corporations, such as the United Fruit Company. Typically, a banana republic has a society of extremely stratified social classes, usually a large impoverished working class and a ruling class plutocracy, composed of the business, political, and military elites. The ruling class controls the primary sector of the economy by way of exploitation of labour. Therefore, the term banana republic is a pejorative descriptor for a servile oligarchy that abets and supports, for kickbacks, the exploitation of large-scale plantation agriculture, especially banana cultivation.
The Turkmen Carpet Museum or the National Carpet Museum is a national museum, situated on 5 Gorogly Street in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.
The Bunny Museum is a museum dedicated to rabbits that was opened to the public in 1998, located in a mid-century building in Altadena, California, US. The museum currently holds more than 35,000 rabbit-related items across 16 galleries in a 7,000 square foot space. Amongst the ever-expanding collection there are ceramic rabbits, rabbit antiquities, stuffed rabbits, cookie-jar rabbits, 9 Rose Parade float rabbits, freeze-dried rabbits, and more. The museum has held the world record for "owning the most bunny items in the world" since 1999 when it was acknowledged by Guinness World Records. At that point in time, it housed 8,473 pieces of rabbit memorabilia. The slogan of the museum is "The Hoppiest Place in the World". It also houses three live rabbits.
The Kaliningrad Regional Amber Museum is a museum located in the Russian city of Kaliningrad devoted to housing and displaying amber artworks. It is located in the city center, on the shore of Lake Verkhneye. Construction on the museum began in 1972.
Vaitape is the largest city of Bora Bora Island in French Polynesia. It has a population of 4,927, about half of the island's population which is about 10,605. It is located about 210 km (130 mi) northwest of Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia. The main language of Vaitape is French, although 20 percent of the population speaks Tahitian.
The Nietzsche-Haus is a house in Sils Maria in the Engadin region of Switzerland, where the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche lived during the summers of 1881 and from 1883 to 1888.
Pizza Brain is a pizza culture museum and pizzeria based in the Pennsylvania. It is home to the world's largest collection of pizza memorabilia and collectibles. Pizza Brain’s headquarters is currently in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia.
The Velveteria Epicenter of Art Fighting Cultural Deprivation, or Velveteria is a museum located in Los Angeles, California, dedicated to velvet paintings. Originally opened in 2005 in Portland, Oregon, the establishment houses hundreds of paintings from Caren Anderson and Carl Baldwin's personal collection of over 2,000 pieces, and is reportedly the only one of its kind. The Velveteria closed in Portland in January 2010 due to financial difficulties and the couple's relocation to Southern California. It was reopened in Chinatown, Los Angeles in 2013. It is now listed as permanently closed.
The Angel Museum was a museum in Beloit, Wisconsin devoted to the collection and display of angel figurines. Founded in 1998, the museum was housed in the former St. Paul's Catholic Church along the Rock River. The museum closed its doors in 2018 due to insufficient funding.
The Fabergé Museum in Saint Petersburg is a privately owned museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It was established by Viktor Vekselberg and his Link of Times foundation in order to repatriate lost cultural valuables to Russia. The museum is located in central Saint Petersburg at the Naryshkin-Shuvalov Palace on the Fontanka River. The museum's collection contains more than 4,000 works of decorative applied and fine arts, including gold and silver items, paintings, porcelain and bronze. A highlight of the museum's collection is the group of nine Imperial Easter eggs created by Fabergé for the last two Russian Tsars.
The Toilet History Museum is a private museum in Kyiv, Ukraine, that contains the largest collection of toilet-related souvenirs and items in the world, including historic chamber pots, squatting pans, and urinals. The museum was founded in 2006 by a Ukrainian couple who worked in the plumbing business and is currently housed in a building within the Kyiv Fortress. In 2016, the Guinness World Records recognized it as "the largest collection of souvenir toilet bowls in the world".
The Emirates National Auto Museum is a national automobile museum in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.