The hit Canadian TV series Our City Tonight interviews T-Boy Editor Ed Boitano

• T-Boy Society of Film, Travel & Music: Travel Nightmares: Travel Lessons Learned
• Attention Seniors 65+! San Diego Zoo is free the whole month of February 2023.
• Twenty-three minutes of New Orleans – By filmmaker Jay Bogas
• T-Boy Society of Film, Travel & Music: T-Boy Society of Film and Music’s Favorite Museums
• The 10 problems that could ruin your 2023 holiday. (telegraph.co.uk)
• T-Boy Society of Film, Travel & Music: Favorite State for a Food  Experience
• Lithuania’s Hill of the Crosses – By filmmaker Captain Ron Stowe
• Walt Mundkowsky: Time Capsule Cinema: Petulia – (Traveling Boy)
• Bearing Witness: Selected Works by Chiura Obata – (southernthing.com)

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Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany – They feature one of my favorite artists Albrecht Durer. My uncle  when seeing my long hair said… “David you look like Albrecht Durer,” which got me interested in the famous artist from the 15^th century. – DE

Anne Frank House, Amsterdam – To see it is to be moved to tears. Such courage and vision beyond her young years. – MG

NY Met, expansive and all under one roof; British Museum of course; Israel Museum; and the Museum Quarter (Island) in Berlin. – SV

My fave is probably the Smithsonian Air and Space in DC.  My most memorable is the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. Though I wish I made time to see L.A.’s MOCA and Griffith Park Observatory. – HL

Museum Island, Berlin – For tours of all 5 museums. – GW

Pompeii, Italy – Not sure if museum, but my favorite historic site. – OM

Polynesian Cultural Museum, Laie, Oahu, Hawaii  – My kids loved it, so much to learn for adults too. – MB

The post The T-Boy Society of Film & Music’s Readers’ Poll appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Welcome to the T-Boy Society of Film and Music’s latest installment of some of our favorite things, things that make life worth living as we continue to grow as patrons of the world. It’s hard to believe that in the past four months we’ve addressed six subjects: Favorite Natural Wonders, Top Road Movies, Architectural Wonders, North-American-English Language Travel Novels, Top Songs of the Road, and Bucket  List Destinations.

The current T-Boy Society of Film and Music poll is devoted to our favorite museums. It was a tough category to nail down to just five, but the results were both educational and a lot of fun. T-Boy writer Richard Carroll put it in the proper context, The museum feature is important because museums offer insights to a destination that one might overlook. There were a number of important museums on members’ lists – the MET, the Hermitage, Smithsonian Museums in DC – which demanded to be represented. But also a sprinkling of little gems, which many of us knew nothing about, e.g. the small Museu do Fado in Lisbon, Seattle’s Museum of Flight and the Skansen Open Air Museum in Stockholm. As always, I learned a lot. I hope you do, too. – EB

T-Boy Society of Film and Music’s Favorite Museums

Richard Frisbie – T-Boy writer:

My Top Five Favorite Museums in the World

• American Museum of Natural History in NYC – Because I’m sentimental. As a kid spending my school year in New York’s Hudson Valley, and summers in New York City, my brother and city cousins and I spent rainy summer days in the museum. It was our playground, surrounded by ancient and modern animals, and all sorts of exotic things, where the wonders of the world were available to us. When the movie Night in the Museum came out I was reminded of all the fun we had there as kids.
• The Guggenheim Museum in NYC – When Frank Lloyd Wright’s amazing architectural wonder opened, we (autonomous) kids walked up from 57th (between 9th & 10th) to see it.  So long as we got back before the street lights came on we had the run of the city. The Calder was fun, but mostly I remember the spiral ramp up past all the art, and how inspiring the building was from the outside. I was the oldest, a precocious eleven year old.
• The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain – Shortly after it opened I had the occasion to go there and be amazed by the sheer caressable beauty of Frank Gehry’s design, shimmering in the construction zone of what is now a beautiful, sculpture-studded river walk through a library, hotels, convention center, and shopping mall. I’ve been back several times to see how the concept grew, from the Guggenheim additions, to the architectural bridges, and the pedestrian walks where the street used to be. Every hour the museum is cloaked in man-made fog, leaving the guardian Puppy and Mommy-longlegs behind, only to be reunited as the mist settles. It is a wondrous sight!
• The Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice, Italy – Imagine a rare afternoon free in Venice to see the sights. Tourism offices call that free time, then usually fill it with trivial things. Not this time! We went first to the tiny but amazing Leonardo Da Vinci Museum because we discovered it on our way to the Guggenheim, then press-passed our way into the unassuming Guggenheim to see what was going on. There’s a famous statue of a naked, sexually aroused man astride a horse looking out over the Grand Canal.  A museum staffer told me that when school groups visit the museum he unscrews the erection so their young sensibilities would not be offended. He didn’t answer when I asked if he also covered the naked breasts on the female statues. Hypocrisy! (True Story.)
• The truly unique – Grand Prix Museum and Wine Museum in Macau – I was there with the Executive Chefs from PF Chang’s researching menu additions when they opened the museum(s) for a dinner and wine tasting. They pulled out all the stops on that visit, including one on an ancient, smooth-as-silk, port. That was an amazing museum dinner in a week of incredible food!

I go to museums every time I visit an area. There are several other memorable ones that could easily be in the Top Five: Roberto Burle Marx’s Siteo in Rio, The Prado in Madrid, the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, Spain, and especially . . . well, in truth, there are too many for me to list. But read on. I’m sure my colleagues included them elsewhere in this article.

Susan Breslow – T-Boy writer:

• Nobel Prize Museum, Stockholm, Sweden – After Alfred Nobel discovered dynamite, he left his estate built on the proceeds to reward individual achievements in chemistry, literature, medicine, physics, and peace. In this compact museum, computer tablets offer insights into winners by decade and describe each one’s contributions to humanity. You’ll feel even closer to genius when poring over the serious and quirky displays of awardees’ possessions including personal notebooks, bicycles, even spectacles. In the reading room, find copies of volumes by Nobel Literature Laureates and a cozy place to page through them.
• Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy – There’s nothing fusty about this house museum, featuring the personal collection of the American heiress who became a patron of pre- and postwar American and European modernists. Works by Magritte, Dalí, Kandinsky, Klee, Picasso, Brancusi, and others confirm her prescient eye for the greats. Relax in the garden and stroll to the landing at the back of the palazzo, which overlooks Venice’s Grand Canal from up high.
• Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Museums inspired by the passion of a single individual are invariably unique. Once the private preserve of Albert C. Barnes, who made his fortune by developing a compound to combat gonorrhea and other inflammations, this museum is idiosyncratic in the way it presents Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, Modigliani, Van Gogh, Degas, and other virtuosos: It’s rare to find a solitary oil painting on a wall; typically Barnes’ “wall ensembles” also include sculpture, wrought-iron forms, lamps, furniture, and other objects that cohere with the canvases.
• Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York – A wealth of world-class museums welcome visitors to New York; its Metropolitan is encompassing. Yet it’s not my favorite. That’s the Whitney, the first museum dedicated to the work of living American artists and home to a trend-setting Biennial. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, another wealthy patron of the arts and a respected sculptor in her own right, founded it in 1930. About a decade ago the museum moved from its snooty Upper East Side address to an innovative Renzo Piano structure in the Meatpacking District. In addition to the outstanding collection, nearly every floor has an outdoor plaza, where visitors can take in views of the low-rise neighborhood, the Highline, and the Hudson River.
• Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia – I was familiar with Henri Matisse’s The Dance, but it wasn’t until I visited the Hermitage did I realize the master had also created Music to complement it; the latter is rarely seen outside the country. The world’s second-largest art museum (after the Louvre), the Hermitage is a six-building complex that is also home to other priceless paintings, antiquities, the gilded carriages of royalty, and a large collection of intricately fashioned and bejeweled Fabergé Easter eggs that inspire thoughts of larceny.

Richard Carroll – T-Boy writer:

• National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City – My first visit, one of many, was in 1971. Visitors are greeted near the entrance by the towering statue Tlaloc, the water god, and beyond is an incredible collection of Mexican history, with 23 exhibit halls covering 100,000 square feet on two spacious floors. A national treasure with international recognition, the museum features superbly displayed Maya pre-Columbian heritage, a massive empire that reached from Mexico to Guatemala and Central America. Large notable murals, a 22-ton Aztec sun stone, and hours of informative enjoyment, are a tremendous boost in understanding a diverse and complex country, the people, and the various languages. You need more than one visit to fully digest this world-renowned complex.
• Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena California – Elegant and welcoming, the museum on Colorado Boulevard in Old Town Pasadena is seen by millions as the annual Rose Bowl Parade passes by. But beyond the exterior, the Norton Simon ambiance feels as if you should be sipping champagne as you browse a selection of 12,000 art pieces, and one of the finest collections of 19th-century French art including more than 100 works by Edgar Degas. A splendid enjoyment is the lush Sculpture Garden surrounding a Lilly Pond reminiscent of Monet where plants bloom year-round. The Garden Cafe overlooking the Lilly Pond is perfect for a casual lunch and where one can pull away for a moment or two from the hustle and bustle of everyday life.
• Museo Picasso, Malaga, Spain – Malaga, Picasso’s birthplace, the artist is alive and well thanks to the Malaguenas in his Andalusian hometown who understand the strength of a legend. The proud city has the great artist front and center with the Museo Picasso housed in the celebrated 16-century Palacio de Buenavista in the heart of the historic district. One of 34 museums in the city, the Museo Picasso is designed with 12 halls or galleries with 226 works of art, and Picasso’s colorful and passionate vision of life with sketches, ceramics, and large format art works that are a lasting memory. Throughout the gallery are short powerful Picasso quotes from a collection of a hundred or more of Picasso’s thoughts on life, that add another dimension to a complex and timeless personality. “What one does is what counts and not what had the intention of doing.” “Spain is the boldest, saddest, and most surprising place on earth.” “To finish, to achieve – don’t those words actually have a double meaning.” With church bells ringing from the adjacent Renaissance-style Cathedral de Malaga, 1528, the museum has uncovered a level beneath its ground floor where Roman and Phoenician ruins are nicely displayed.

Deb Roskamp – T-Boy photographer & writer: 

• Musée d’Orsay, Paris – Hands down, être numéro un. I could meander fully enchanted through this brilliantly renovated train station seemingly forever, as I’d never tire of the treasures displayed inside.  Some of its collection used to hang in what was, in the 80s, my favorite museum, the jeu de Paume.
• Florence Nightingale Museum, London – Out of London’s hundreds of museums, this one reaches out to me.  What can I say?  I’m a nurse and Flo was one of my heroes.
• Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam – Never has a museum inspired a curiosity to learn about a painter like this one did for me.  At my only visit in 1981, I knew so little about the artist’s life and work.  Decades later, after having scouted out countless areas he painted, read and reread his letters to Theo, I only hope that I will be able to return.
• Museu do Fado, Lisbon – This sweet little museum in the Alfama area of Lisbon is a treasure.  It’s an immersive education for the ears rather than the eyes.  One can spend hours leisurely listening to the various artists of one’s choice in the comfort of an armchair.
• Anne Frank House, Amsterdam – Everyone knows her story.  Who wouldn’t want to see where that optimistic and courageous child lived who gave us so much inspiration? I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that every-thing will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.
• Honorable mention: Musee Picasso, Paris – Located in a converted 17th century hotel, this museum is a lovely testament to the talents of this famed artist and organized in a chronologic fashion; Museo Frida Kahlo (Casa Azul), Coyoacan, Mexico – How moving is it to be in the artist’s home where she was born, worked and died?; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. – It’s been a long time since I visited, but a lasting impression was made.  Such a lovely collection of European and American artists; Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto – If you looked in my closet, you might not guess that this collection would make my list, as my own footwear is not so interesting or extensive.  However, it does, simply for the novelty of finding shoes from nearly every civilization under one roof; Hermitage, St. Petersburg – The architecture, the sheer vastness of its collection… it just had to make my list.

Stephen Brewer  – T-Boy writer:

Top five museums – this is hard to narrow down, but here goes:

• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City – for scope and depth, especially European paintings
• Musée d’Orsay, Paris
• Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam – for the Northern painters
• Pergamon Museum, Berlin – for ancient architectural wonders and Nephritite
• Archaeological Museum, Naples – for Pompeii frescoes
• Acropolis Museum, Athens – for the Parthenon Frieze

Ed Boitano – T-Boy editor:

• Henry the VIII’s Hampton Court Palace, London – Growing up in the Pacific Northwest my enthusiasm for castles and palaces was something from which I would only read in books. But, decades later, my wish was well worth waiting for when I finally stepped foot into Hampton Court Palace, British King Henry the VIII’s favorite Royal Palace. Overwhelmed by its scope and grandeur, at its gatehouse there’s an astronomical clock made for Henry, and 30 suites used for his grandest visitors. Inside, I was amazed by the lavish use of half-timber, rectangular and bay windows, carved wood paneled walls, moldings and design. Two staircases lead to the 106 ft. long and 40 ft. wide Great Hall banquet room where Henry would ‘play’ the role of a Renaissance monarch. The hall features a spectacularly decorated hammer-beam, and walls covered by Henry’s most treasured tapestries. One sleeping room was filled with nothing more than straw, which I assumed would be my place of rest during the 1520s. I was pleasantly surprised to find everything so accessible, making it easy to become part of the experience and attempt to understand Henry’s complicated mind.
• Imperial War Museum (IWM), London – Yes, there is the ‘’boy’s room”: an atrium with exhibits of V-2 and Polaris missiles; a Grant tank used by Bernard Montgomery; and the Supermarine Spitfire number R/6915, which flew in the Battle of Britain and shot down three enemy Luftwaffe aircraft. But this not a shrine for the glorification of war, but rather a museum which gives voice to the extraordinary experiences of ordinary people forced to live their lives in a world torn apart by conflict. Displayed across six floors, the museum’s vast collection encompasses a wealth of objects – uniforms to photographs, films and works of art – each with a story to tell. In the basement you’ll find yourself a participant in WW1 trench warfare or among Londoners in a subway air raid shelter, seeking safety from the Nazi Blitz.
• Stasi Museum and DDR Museum, Berlin – The Stasi Museum focuses on how the Stasi (the DDR secret police, modeled after the USSR’s KGB) operated with their original technology of bugs, hidden cameras and weapons. The main attraction is the former office of Erich Mielke, head of the Stasi from 1957 to reunification. His second floor office remains untouched since the days of the Stasi, complete with desks, chairs and filing cabinets. The DDR Museum provides an interactive experience of everyday life in the former East Germany. From cookie cutter kitchens, the sputtering Trabant (East Germanys’ answer to West Germanys’ Volkswagen) and an ill fated attempt to copy the forbidden Western blue jeans out of cotton, was illuminating in capturing this piece of East Germanys’ Cold War history – still unknown to many North Americans today.
• Joods Historisch Museum, Amsterdam – A beautiful design of four adjoining synagogues, linked by internal walkways which form one large museum. The synagogues were central to Jewish life until WWII, and were restored in 1980s. Most Dutch citizens who visit the museum today are not of Jewish ancestry, and consider the museum very much part of their own history in the Netherland’s courageous support, often facing penalties of death, in helping and hiding minorities throughout history.
• Ulster American Folk Park, Tyrone, Northern Ireland – This open-air museum features more than 30 exhibit buildings exploring three-centuries of Irish emigration. Using docents and displays of traditional crafts, the museum brings to life those who left Ulster for the Americas in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Seeing a replica of a full scale coffin ship used during the Famine of the 1840s and the Highland Clearances, felt like a heart wrenching blow to all forms of humanity. Coffin ships were the cheapest way to cross the Atlantic, but were obscenely crowded, unseaworthy and generally with inadequate drinking water, food and sanitation. Mortality rates of 30% were not uncommon. It was said that sharks could be seen following the ships, because so many bodies were thrown overboard.

More Favorite Museums    Readers’ Poll

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Weave Cleveland – Cinematographer Travel Guys TV:

• The Royal British Columbia Museum, Victoria, BC – Amazing! One floor is an old English-style city downtown at night (supposedly Victorian in colonial times). I used to sit in the theatre and watch Buster Keaton silent movies, etc. all afternoon. This really is an incredible museum.
• The Royal London Wax Museum, Victoria, BC – Royalty and celebrities upstairs or go down to the dungeon to see the chamber of horrors.
• Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland – Like many great museums, you could take all week and still not experience everything. Outstanding!
• Fare Pote’e Maeva Huahine – One large thatch-roofed hut on stilts over the water on the island of Huahine, French Polynesia. Unmanned, no fee – just walk in and look at Polynesian history and artifacts.
• Pompeii, Italy – So, it’s not a museum as much as a real-time excavation site but it is INCREDIBLE!
• Honorable mention: The Ulster Museum, Belfast, Northern Ireland – Viking lore, Small Medieval thrones chiseled  out of a single piece of stone, Egyptian mummies; The Titanic Museum, Belfast, Northern Ireland – WOW!!; The Crocker Art Gallery and Crocker House, Sacramento, CA – Just go. Enough said.

James Boitano – T-Boy writer:

• Musee d’Orsay, Paris
• The Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
• Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
• The National Museum of Iceland, Reykjavik 
• Skansen Open Air Museum, Stockholm 

Allan Smith – Artist & T-Boy writer:

• Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida
• The Louvre, Paris, France
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
• The Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California
• The Uffizi Galleries, Florence, Italy
• Honorable mention: Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia; The National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; The Smithsonian, Washington, D.C.; The Palace Museum, Beijing, China

Brent Campbell – Musician and composer:

• The Metropolitan Museum, NYC
• The Museum of Flight, Seattle
• Lemay, America’s Car Museum, Tacoma, Washingon
• The Louvre, Paris
• Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Nashville 
• Museum of History and Industry, Seattle (newly expanded and c’mon Bobo is in the house)

Ringo Boitano – T-Boy Writer:

• Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto – The 4,500-year history of footwear is explored through 13,000 shoes, making it the largest collection of historic footwear in the world. You’ll find everything from Napoleon’s shoes, John Lennon’s Beatle Boots and Akan chief’s sandals to Inuit sealskin boots, kabkabs worn by Turkish women and chopines from the Italian Renaissance – so outrageously high that they make today’s tall stiletto heels seem almost like classical footwear.
• The National World War I Museum, Kansas City, Missouri – It is the only American museum dedicated to remembering, interpreting and understanding the Great War and its enduring impact on the global community. The Exhibit Hall features the Panthéon de la Guerre mural, depicting the figure of Victory, surrounded by thousands of French heroes, and colorful flags of the 22 Allied nations of World War I, arranged in the order in which each country entered the conflict. A recreated trench illustrates the brutality of the war. The exterior is decorated with mosaic tiles that convey a night sky strewn with gold stars, representing the sacrifice of Gold Star Mothers during the Great War.
• The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, Ohio – The museum documents the history of rock music and the artists, producers, engineers, and other notable figures who have influenced its development. The museum’s library and archives is the world’s most comprehensive repository of materials related to the history of rock and roll. The Hall’s temporary exhibits have featured Elvis Presley, hip-hop, the Supremes, the Who, U2, John Lennon, the Clash, the Grateful Dead, Bruce Springsteen, Women Who Rock, and the Rolling Stones. I recall an exhibit which featured John Lennon’s white piano used in the song Imagine, and his 1955-56 (age 15) report card: He has too many of the wrong ambitions and his energy is too often misplaced. – Liverpudlian Headmaster
• Museo Casa natale Arturo Toscanini, Parma, Italy – I was primed and ready for a tour of maestro Arturo Toscanini’s former home, now a museum, after having spent the previous day at Milan’s La Scala Opera House. Arturo Toscanini (1867 – 1957) was renowned for his performances of Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Richard Strauss, Debussy and his own compatriots Rossini, Verdi, Boito and Puccini. His interpretations were notable for detail of phrasing, dynamic intensity, and an essentially classical conception of form. I felt a sense of warmth as I visited each of the rooms, filled with important original artifacts, documents, letters, photos, artwork, posters, and programs. Initially Toscanini  was a cello  player until his reputation as a conductor of authority and skill supplanted his cello career. His epitaph is taken from his remarks concluding the 1926 premiere of Puccini’s unfinished Turandot: Here the opera ends, because at this point the maestro died.
• The Scotch Whisky Experience, Edinburgh, Scotland – Not really a museum, but after a couple of wee drams of sublime single malt whisky, does it really matter? Located at the top of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, just below Edinburgh Castle, this is a delight for those with a discriminating taste in single malt whisky.  For over 30 years the Scotch Whisky Experience has been conducting educational tours and tastings of uisce beatha (water of life), with the guarantee of a very sensational experience. As I walked out the door, I realized I was now ready for a bout with haggis.

T. E. Mattox – T-Boy music critic:

• Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and National Air & Space, Washington DC – So many buildings, so little time. But these are just two of my faves.
• Musée d’Orsay, Paris – So fun. The whole environment is unique. Some of my favorite paintings live here.
• The Louvre, Paris – Much like the Smithsonian, overpowering! Most people just head for the Mona Lisa.
• The Vatican, Vatican City – Room after room full of amazing art and sculptures and then… the Sistine Chapel!
• LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), Los Angeles – Love, LOVE the Wolf head room and Sabertooth tiger display. Amazed at all the animals they continue to dig out of the tar pits. Crazy.

Rourke – Musician & composer:

• Art Institute of Chicago, Millennium Park, Chicago
• Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy
• Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze, Florence, Italy
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
• National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Raoul Pascual – T-Boy co-founder, illustrator and art director:

• Huntington Library, San Marino, California – For the vastness and the variety – Library of Bibles, Japanese and Chinese garden, Cactus, Green Room, paintings, sculptures, etc.
• Smithsonian National Air & Space, Washington DC – Exhibits of aircraft, spacecraft, missiles, rockets, and other flight-related artifacts.
• Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles – Designed to examine racism and prejudice around the world with a strong focus on the history of the Holocaust
• The Brooklyn Museum, New York City borough of Brooklyn – An art museum which holds an art collection with roughly 1.5 million works.
• Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC – Larger than 18 football fields and home to the largest natural history collection in the world.

Fyllis Hockman – T-Boy writer:

• Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb, Croatia – Dedicated to failed love relationships, its exhibits include personal objects left over from former lovers, accompanied by brief descriptions. The museum began as a traveling collection of donated items. Since then, it has found a permanent location in Zagreb. In May 2011, the Museum of Broken Relationships received the Kenneth Hudson Award, given out by the European Museum Forum. The award goes to “a museum, person, project or group of people who have demonstrated the most unusual, daring and, perhaps, controversial achievement that challenges common perceptions of the role of museums in society.”

Phil Harper – Political fundraiser:

• Leon Trotsky Museum, Coyoacan, Mexico – The Leon Trotsky Museum is located just a few blocks away from the Frida Kahlo Museum in Coyoacan, a small city now surrounded by Mexico City. Trotsky was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army. As one of the original Russian Bolsheviks, he was considered the heir to Vladimir Lenin, chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Soviet Union. Lenin shared Trotsky’s ideal of worldwide Communism, but believed it was more pragmatic to consolidate the victories in the Russian Revolution rather than actively spreading military revolution to other countries. Lenin felt that Josef Stalin would be dangerous to their goals and should be removed from the position of General Secretary of the Party. But his words came too late, and, after his death, Stalin forced his way into power. Trotsky was exiled, and eventually hunted by the tyrannical Stalin regime as a threat to his de facto dictatorship. While on the run with no place to hide, Trotsky was eventually given political asylum in Mexico, sponsored by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Along with his wife, Natalia, he lived in the Rivera/Kahlo house for a few years, but later relocated to a new fortress-life home with guards and watchtowers.

As I entered the museum I was told that I was to have a private tour by the museum’s director. To my surprise, the museum director was none other than Trotsky’s grandson, Esteban Volkov. A remarkably spry and dashing man in his early 90s with impeccable manners, Mr. Volkov had lived with his grandparents,  Leon and Natalia, at age thirteen, and was wounded himself as a result of the Stalin operative’s failed machine gun assault. The bullet holes are still in the walls.  He walked me through the museum, patiently explaining in detail the history of photos from Trotsky’s lifetime, his participation in the Bolshevik Revolution, family tree, books and newspapers.

The centerpiece of the museum is Trotsky’s study, where he was fatally wounded by Ramón Mercader, who had posed as a family friend. While engrossed in a Mercader manuscript, which he had asked Trotsky to read as a favor, the assassin snuck up behind him and struck him in the back of the head with an ice axe. Mercader was a Spanish communist and probable agent of Stalin. Trotsky died from his wounds the next day. The Soviet government denied responsibility, and Mercader was sentenced to 20 years in prison by Mexican authorities.

Mr. Volkov ultimately raised his own family in the house, and then turned it into a museum on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Leon Trotsky.

Museum lovers, If you have a museum/s that you’d like to share, please send to Traveling Boy. We’ll post and do all the work!

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