Quirky Collections

ONLY FOUND IN LAS VEGAS

There are a number of offbeat museums and exhibitions around Las Vegas to keep one entertained for hours, if not days.

Starting with one of the most popular, folks need to schedule a trip to the Neon Museum. Known colloquially as “the place old signs go to die,” the Neon Museum is a popular destination for folks eager to know more about some of Las Vegas’ early, glory days.

The boneyard, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, features more than 200 neon wonders dating back to the ‘50s and earlier. Celebrating the architecture, design and culture of Las Vegas, the museum, which can be dusty to traverse, collects, preserves, and exhibits iconic Las Vegas signs of all shapes and sizes. neonmuseum.org

Next up is the Pinball Hall of Fame. It is the place where anyone with a roll of quarters can live like royalty for hours (depending on their skill level). The 25,000-squarefeet filled with aisles of games such as Donkey Kong, Transformers,

Iron Man, X-men, Ghostbusters, Dead Pool and Pac Man, but there are also baseball games that transcend the digital slot, Keno, and poker games that fill casinos today.

The Pinball Hall of Fame has a game for all ages, and there are stepstools for the shorter folks out there, and even a giant gumball machine for the young and the young at heart. pinballmuseum.org.

Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition. Located at the Luxor Hotel, it’s an authentic look at the largest and most opulent ship when it set sale. The luxury ocean liner, built by White Star, sank on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England en route to New York City on April 14-15, 1912. This exhibition features re-creations of its Grand Staircase and the Promenade Deck. There

are more than 250 authentic artifacts in the exhibit that have been recovered from the

wreckage site that lies 12,600 feet under water in the north Atlantic Ocean. titaniclasvegas.com

For anyone looking to be frightened while enjoying the sights and sounds of Las Vegas, there is always Zak Bagans’ The Haunted Museum. The actor/host of the Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures, now in its 27th season, created The Haunted Museum in a 1938 Tudor mansion and he is constantly adding to it. Housed in one of the oldest buildings in town, each room features a new horror,

and this is no cheesy adaptation.

The doll room, for instance, has enough demon-looking dolls to frighten even the most jaded participant, and then there are bone fragments from Charles

Manson and Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s “Death Van.” The creepy crawl through The Haunted Museum has twice won the Best Museum category in Best of Law Vegas and has been included on Bagans’ television show. Children younger than 14 are not permitted. thehauntedmuseum.com

Another popular spot on Vegas’ non-gaming circuit is the Mob Museum, also known as the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement. The former three-story post office is filled with mafioso memorabilia, re-enactment videos and even features docents dressed in pin-striped suits and fedora hats. There is an Underground so folks can learn about Prohibition and gain insights into the drinking culture that existed before the 1920s, and it even has a distillery

tour and tasting to add to its authenticity. There are too many artifacts to list, but the museum does have the remains of Chicago’s St. Valentine’s Day Massacre Wall (from 1929), copper stills, submachine guns, a Nevada gas-chamber chair from 1924, a 1919 World Series ticket from the conspiracy time that had eight Chicago White Sox players’

plans to throw a game against Located off the beaten path and Las Vegas Strip is

the National Atomic Testing

Museum. Found 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the museum documents the history of nuclear testing and America’s nuclear weapons program at the Nevada test site there in the

Mojave Desert. Run as an affiliate program of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the museum has exhibits on pivotal moments in the nation’s atomic past, including the 75th anniversary of the nation’s first nuclear test known as the “Trinity.” This permanent exhibit has stunning artifacts from the day in 1945 when the world changed. The museum also offers an elaborate selection of online educational materials so folks can visit the museum virtually as well. nationalatomictestingmuseum.org.

One of the best traveling exhibitions in Las Vegas right now has to be Barbie: A Cultural Icon, an exhibition taking place at the Shops at Crystals. The weekend shows of this exhibit often sell out days and weeks in advance, so get tickets soon to learn more about the Barbie doll, first introduced in 1959. Now 63 years old, Barbie has been lauded and criticized for her dollish beauty,

her sometimes deliberate materialism, her role in women’s equality, and her other influences on pop culture. The exhibition includes the original 1959 Barbie, a life-sized Barbie pink Corvette car, the Barbie Dreamhouse. barbieexpo.com