Now Showing

Exceptional exhibits are highlighted each quarter. Selections from previous seasons are archived here. Join our Board of Directors won't you?

Fall 2008

Whether or not you're a science fiction fan, you've got to love more than 650 Philip K. Dick book covers, collected by fans for his official site. As design trends change, and the stories pass through time and language barriers, it's astounding to see the variety of interpretations. In some cases, it's particularly interesting to see how the book design influenced the films derived from Dick's stories (most notably, "Blade Runner" and "Minority Report") and how the films influenced the design of later printings of the books.

Our ill-informed western stereotypes once led us to believe that drinking in the USSR usually involved a bottle of vodka and was consumed while wearing a fur hat as sad music lingered somewhere off in the distance. But all of us (except for Sarah Palin who regularly witnessed the truth from her kitchen window) couldn't have been more wrong, as the Collection of Soviet Wine Labels fills us in on the many varieties of vino communism had to offer. Stomped by the workers, casked by the workers, consumed by the workers. Lenin would certainly toast to that.

Fifteen years ago, when it was finally time for me to buy a car on my own, the first place I went was a Pontiac dealer. The reason, I knew fully well, was that bird on the hood of Burt Reynolds' Trans Am in Smokey and the Bandit, a movie I was obsessed with nearly as much as Star Wars back in 1977. Reason eventually won out and I bought a Honda Civic, but damned if I didn't drive that baby home, park it in the yard and drink a sixer of Coors while sitting on the pathetically undecorated hood.

Like film projectors, part of the attraction of reel-to-reel tape decks as objects is not just that they have a lot of moving parts, it's that you actually get to watch those parts moving. A digital progress bar doesn't hold a candle to the long, slow, hypnotic unwinding of a party tape from the left reel to the right. These vintage ads and manuals mostly appeal to the idea of being a "pro" in your home. That's a charming idea in the age of the amateur.

I don't know much about the series of novels about Simon Templar, aka "The Saint," but I do know a little about The MoOM, and one thing I know is that nothing makes for a more satisfying exhibit than a few pages jammed full of iterations on a single idea. Jean-Marc Lofficier's Saint Cover Gallery is exactly that. An expressive stick-figure placed in hundreds of situations by a group of inventive artists makes for a fun-to-browse collection that practically defines the idea of "variations on a theme."

the Museum of online museums

Currently | Previously | Benefactors | Mission

Welcome to the MoOM. The galleries are updated continuously, and new exhibitions are hung each quarter.

The Museum Campus

The Permanent Collection

Galleries, Exhibitions and Shows

† = Most recently added

Recently acquired but not-yet-collected exhibits, with descriptions, along with exhibits previously collected, can be found in the MoOM Annex, a part of the general Coudal Partners archives.

• Cover
• Page Two + Archives
• Shop
• About CP
• Guest Editors
• Museum of Online Museums
• Copy Goes Here
• Depth of Field
• Field-Tested Books
• Layer Tennis
• 72°
• Verse By Voice
• Pinsetter
• Western State
• Video Wall