Museum of Pop Culture - Seattle, WA

Jonathan Elmore
Sep 22
3 min read

Updated: 13 minutes ago

I seriously thought about making this museum a four part post. The Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle covers so many things, it's nearly impossible to pick a reasonable amount of photos to share. And I took a ton of photos. Alas, I'm just going to do one post, but I'm going to separate it into four sections; General Pop - Rock Music - Soul and R&B & Horror,Sci-Fi, Fantasy. I think that's a fair way to present all the great exhibits that this museum has to offer. And I'll try to hit the high points or this post will be a mile long. Not that I don't want to tell you all about it, but even I would have trouble reading all the things I'd tell you about. So, here's the first section, Pop Culture.

The first section I went through was kind of a catch all Pop Culture area. They had everything from Kermit and Barbie to Iron Man and Rhianna. It was a good introduction to what the rest of the museum had going on. It also put into perspective what constitutes Popular Culture, and it's a lot. Some of it is entertainment. Some of it social trends. Some of it is the anguish that those trends bring. Here are a few pictures from this area. Like I said before, there were oh so many more I took. Up next, like Montgomery Burns on The Simpsons said, "That Rock and/or Roll."

I was raised mostly on Rock and Roll music but my parent's record collection also had classic country, gospel, classical, soul, bluegrass, and easy listening. But with all the genres I was exposed to, Rock spoke to me the most early in my life. One of my earliest memories was listening to a Freedom Rock album that had two Jimi Hendrix tracks on it. To me, it seemed other-worldly. Later, I would listen to the radio and discovered even more great music from Jimi and his band. Later in life, as my music tastes expanded, one of my favorite bands became a punk metal outfit out of the Pacific Northwest, Nirvana. MoPop had exhibits of both Jimi and Nirvana and luckily for me, I got to see the Nirvana exhibit a few days before it came down after 14 years of being up. It was good to see the history of two iconic groups of music history.

When I finally made it to college, I was opened up to a world I had no idea was going on without me. The small town I grew up in was truly great but it wasn't exactly a hub of culture. Living in the dorm, I was shown art, music, theatre, dance, Swedish exchange students, and a weird plant my suitemate was growing in our bathroom. The new music I heard in the halls was far more intoxicating than the smoke coming from his room. I'm a very shy person, but I would knock on a door and ask what was on the stereo. I heard reggae, r&b, hip hop, folk, jazz, blues, and music from every country imaginable. My mind was cracked open and would never close. The next section was some of the artists that I heard while expanding my catalog of music.

Finally, this is kind of the movie section. More specifically Horror, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy that includes the movies in those genres. What an amazing exhibit!! To get to see so many props, costumes, collectables, and displays with this pop culture memorabilia was an experience I won't soon forget. The horror section even had different main character's kill counts. HA! I guy standing next to me said, "Chuckie only killed 44 people? Pshhh." I said, "44? Those are rookie numbers!" We had a good laugh and stared at the weapons used in the movies. Big fun touring this section of the museum. Here are some photos.