Okay, you have GOT to check out that bathroom!

This summer, when visiting the Newseum for the first time, I stepped into the restroom.  And it ended up being one of my favorite spots in the museums.  Why?  It was tiled with giggle-inducing headlines like this one: 

Restrooms.  We all have to have them, we all have to use them.  We have talked about restrooms before on this blog, primarily in the context of how clean they are.  Totally important.  (The Newseum's restrooms were very clean.)  But is there an opportunity for engaging our audiences more deeply . . . in the loo?  

Well, yes.  In some recent research we conducted on behalf of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, one young woman made the case for also having a remarkable restroom:

Everyone loves a clean restroom. I like an interesting restroom. It bugs me when I go to an art museum, for example, and the walls are bare white. It's like a blank canvas - couldn't they even find a university student to come in and do a mural for them or something? Or maybe even put some of the collection that's rotated out in the ladies' waiting area (and gentleman's equivalent, if they have them). Or at a science museum - paint the periodic table on the walls, tile in the Fibonacci sequence. It just shows such attention to detail, and how neat is it to come out and tell your friends, "Okay, you have GOT to check out that bathroom!"

                                                        - 25-year-old woman

The USS Constitution Museum has been using their restroom as an interpretive tool for years (an interpretive panel can be seen in the image below; why my beloved dog, Shadow, is posing with it wearing a holiday scarf is a completely different story).  Asking, and answering, where the sailors "went" is educational, funny, and gives people something to talk about. 

Yet there is something else about this restroom that makes people talk.  As Robert Kiihne, the museum's Director of Exhibits, recently posted on their excellent Family Learning Forum, their restrooms are also ". . .  dark, grey . . . and poorly ventilated. Visitors complain about them - even when the restrooms have just been cleaned. I am sure that for every visitor that complains 10 more are just turned off."

Which takes us back, of course, to cleanliness.  So clean restrooms, yes.  You do not want to be remarkable for your dirty (or just dimly lit) restrooms.  But now that you have that covered, what can you do to make your restrooms remarkable in an exciting and creative way? 

(Finally, the excellent Elizabeth Merritt of AAM would likely badger me if I neglected to mention the splendid Art Museum Toilet Museum of Art.  Check it out.)

Are the restrooms in your museum remarkable?  Why?  Or have you seen particularly remarkable restrooms?  What makes them so?  Simply click on “comments” below to share your thoughts (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

And if you do have remarkable restrooms in your museum, send us a photo and we'll post it for you.  Send photos to susie (at) reachadvisors (dot) com.

-Susie

Check out these fantastic photos from the Pacific Science Center.  These Grossology restrooms are truly remarkable.  Felicia Maffia, the Director of Exhibit Development, shared with us, "It's really fun for staff to overhear some of the great conversations that happen when visitors encounter these two restrooms."  Thanks, Felicia, for sending these along!

 

 

Comments

[Jodi]

I don't think we have any pictures, but the bathrooms in the Bloch Building at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art are stunning. They have even been voted as best bathrooms in Kansas City, and I believe they won an award.

[Susie Wilkening, Reach Advisors]

Oh, interesting Jodi. Anyone from the Nelson-Atkins have some photos?

[Marcella]

At the county museum at which I used to work, we had an outhouse exhibit up in the hallway that led into the restrooms. Copies of ads, photographs, ditties about outhouses, a sort of hodgepodge of material that had been put together long before I arrived on the scene. We finally removed the exhibit after I had been there about a year (it really looked tired). The very next day we had visitors asking what happened to the outhouse stuff.

[Ellen Sue Blakey, Thermopolis, Wyoming]

At a former folk art, history & children's museum, we were faced with no money and a ladies lower floor restroom with the ugliest pink stalls I ever saw, mismatched floor and a peeling outer wall that could not be repaired. Volunteers sewed a gathered muslin curtain covering the entire wall, put in a old-fashioned wooden hutch/cupboard, filled it with small toiletry artifacts (then screwed clear acrylic across the front so they wouldn't disappear) and strung a feedsack fabric around the sink a la 1930s, complete with a fake mouse in a trap underneath if you looked (and most people did). The floor was painted and sealed a solid color. The stalls were papered with illustrations from old mail-order catalogs, cut out and painstakingly overlapped by hand and sealed. Ladies would burst out laughing when they walked in, and if no one was around, they'd drag their husbands in to read the ads & prices. I think it was the most photographed area in the museum.

[Mary Ann Colopy]

remember the funny restroom attendants at the dutchess county fair? people remember them and look forward to seeing them each year.

[Lisa Craig Brisson]

The Upper Peninsula Children's Museum in Marquette, Michigan has fabulous restrooms. The urinal is a tree! I can't find a photo but I will re-post if I do.

[Sarah]

I used to work at a railroad museum. We were hoping to put together an exhibit on rail car restrooms within the restroom lobby of our museum, but never got the funding or time to do so. it was a great idea though, as most people don't realize that up until the late 20th century a rail car restroom was simply a "hole in the floor." Many of our older visitors remember seeing signs inside cars that said do not use this car's restroom while parked at a station! I have been to the Newseum, and I agree the restrooms are fabulous. Not only do these exhibits educate, but they make visitors laugh too! Having a good chuckle provides an instant memory and a good experience.

[Jodi Larson]

This has long been a topic of interest to me! I used to work at a working historic farm where visitors always had the options of using-- and learning from-- the outhouse if they did not want to trek back to the visitor center.
Here are some of the great museum restrooms I've noticed:

In the art museum world there is a grant from the Kohler Co (bathroom fixture manufacturer) and its philanthropic fund that has been used to turn some restrooms into galleries in their own right.

Here are photos of the Brown Fine Arts Center at Smith College: http://www.smith.edu/bfac/restroomgallery.php
and here is the press release: http://www.smith.edu/newsoffice/releases/02-083.html

Here is the washrooms at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Check out all six washrooms!): https://www.jmkac.org/TheWashrooms

My all time favorite museum restroom was the Presbytere in New Orleans. For the duration of a large exhibit on the Zulu Krewe and Mardi Gras parades the museums restroom doors were replaced with port-a-potty doors in keeping with the feel of a parade and parade culture. Better still, fake port-a-potty doors were put up alongside the clearly marked functional doors to create a bank of blue plastic doors that turned the infrastructure into exhibit.

[Robin Gabriel]

Susie - thanks for this posting. I too took pictures of the restroom on a recent visit to the Newseum. I love how they brought the theme of their site into the restroom.

I have a very strong memory from a long ago school visit to the National Museum of American History (Smithsonian). The first floor ladies room had an excellent display wall of how a toilet operated. I have no idea if this display is still around, but it made quite an impression on me when I was 12.

[Kirstin]

Great post! We've discussed this often at our children's museum and recently made a small step in this direction. We hung mirrors--each a different shape and color--above the changing table in each bathroom so babies can look at themselves during their diaper changes. Next step - simple labels to prompt adults to talk about the color and shape of each mirror with their children.

[Tom Reitz]

We're in the midst of construction of a new regional museum and we've planned for two exhibit cases in the entrance vestibule to the washrooms. And we've been discussing panels on stall doors and over urinals ... about the history of bathrooms and related topics. Good to see what everyone else has done.

[Steve Angel]

At the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst MA, we have tiles of Mr. Carle's Brown Bear Brown Bear art work mixed in with the regular bathroom tiling. We also have tiny toilets for kids and the urnials in the men's room each have an illustration of a fly (drawn by Mr. Carle)in the bowl to help with aim.
Guests on private tours and members of the opposite sex are often snuck in to take a look! One of the best unadvertised secrets here.

Sorry I don't have pictures to share!