Travelsmartplanet

In the stately columned Auckland War Museum, you can discover the world’s largest collection of Maori and Polynesian artifacts. Sitting impressively in the center is a large ornately carved Hotunui meetinghouse from 1878 and a Waka (war canoe), Te Toki-a-Tapiri from 1836. They’re heart and soul of the museum, yet there’s lots more.

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Architect Frank Gehry’s signature metallic swoops and swirls allow for great sculptural photographs of the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle.

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When architect Frank Gehry designs a building, it’s more than a building, it’s a sculpture. Here in Seattle, the Museum of Pop Culture certainly stands out in the city.

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The fantastical sheet metal walls of MoPop were designed by Frank Gehry. It is often quoted as looking like a smashed electric guitar. Gehry himself had made the comparison, “We started collecting pictures of Stratocasters, bringing in guitar bodies, drawing on those shapes in developing our ideas.”

Despite some critical reviews of the structure, the building has been called “a fitting backdrop for the world’s largest collection of Jimi Hendrix memorabilia.” The outside of the building which features a fusion of textures and colors, including gold, silver, deep red, blue and a “shimmering purple haze,” has been declared “an apt representation of the American rock experience.

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If you ever wanted to feel like Captain Kirk and sit in his command chair from Star Trek, you can try it out at Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture.

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In Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture, you can go into the Sound Lab and have fun making sounds. What else? This one allows you to make a lot of noise as it recreates the sounds of the percussion section of the orchestra. 

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Pedals make an artistic statement in the Sound Lab in Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture. 

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This Captain America costume was worn by Rob Brown in 1979. The color was originally blue but has faded over time to this shade of lilac. Eww.

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Groot was created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby and first appeared in Tales to Astonish in 1960. The character was supposed to be from outer space and act like a sentient tree-like creature. The first Groot was an invader that wanted to catch humans for experimentation. It’s transformation into a heroic noble being happened in the crossover comic book  storyline “Annihilation: Conquest”. Groot went on to star in Guardians of the Galaxy. He became a pop culture star, with his line “I am Groot” becoming an Internet meme.

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At Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, WA I learned that Spiderman was co-created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in 1961. Spiderman was an unusual super hero in a few ways. He proved that powers alone do not make a super hero. Also he was a teenager who was still in school. So this comic character was the perfect fantasy vehicle to illustrate the pain and confusion of adolescence. No wonder teenage boys went nuts over him.

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