Anatomy of a Museum: Or Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Icelandic Phallological Museum, but Were Afraid to Ask

Literary Nonfiction. Lyric Essay. Museum Studies. Travel Writing. ANATOMY OF A MUSEUM visits the Icelandic Phallological Museum in its final months under the direction of its original collector, to trace how what started as a gag gift evolved over decades into a museum known around the world. By its own estimation, the Icelandic Phallological Museum is the only institution in the world to seek a collection of phallic specimens from every mammal species in one country and since the recent demise of a human donor, the collection is now complete. But for all its originality, the IPM proves to be an illuminating part of both long-standing museum traditions and the particular bloom of Icelandic institutions since the 1990s, demonstrating the island's uncanny knack of turning private collections into public museums."

A. Kendra Greene is the art director of ＂Defunct＂ magazine and Writer-in-Residence at the Dallas Museum of Art. She started her museum career adhering text to the wall: one vinyl letter at a time. She lives in Dallas, Texas.