Nonseum Herrnbaumgarten, Unconventional museum in Herrnbaumgarten, Austria.
Nonseum Herrnbaumgarten is a museum in a building styled after a Weinviertel village barn, displaying around 250 "inventions we don't need either", as the museum defines them. Among the exhibits are a sheep-counting machine, a blacklight bulb, and a parking meter with a real clockwork that constantly updates the arrival time of the parked car.
The Nonseum opened in 1994 in a building erected in the style of a Weinviertel village barn. It goes back to the Verein zur Verwertung von Gedankenüberschüssen, founded in 1991, whose stated aim is to coax a smile from every last person on earth. The team had already staged widely noticed nonsense inventors' fairs in 1984 and 1985.
The name "Nonseum" is a portmanteau of "nonsense" and "museum". Since 2000 the project "ver-rucktes Dorf Herrnbaumgarten" has placed Nonseum objects in public spaces, among them the "Last Resting Place for the Wobbling Stone", the "Monument for the Living" and the "Single Sock Memorial". Hotels and restaurants in the village are gradually joining the project.
The museum is located in a village setting and is best reached on foot while exploring the town. It helps to allow time for reading the information panels, as every object comes with detailed descriptions.
The founders deliberately rebelled against the logic of useful inventions, creating something both humorous and philosophical in intent. The museum poses the question of whether inventions really need to serve a practical purpose to hold value.
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