Reply #36: It belongs in the The Unknown Museum [View All]

[BrotherBuzz]

http://cabinet-of-wonders.blogspot.com/2007/12/unknown-museum.html

Unknown Museum lives on, privately
Paul Liberatore
04/03/2006

FOR THE 15 years that it was an oddball institution in Mill Valley, from 1974 to 1989, Mickey McGowan's Unknown Museum was something of a misnomer.

Everybody knew about it. A vintage Fiat station wagon stuffed with dolls, their plastic faces pressed against its windows, was always parked out front, making it hard to miss.

A hippie artist who called himself the Apple Cobbler, McGowan made kitschy shoes for rock stars and fashionistas out of brocade trimmed with toy tanks, rubber ducks, super balls and other gewgaws.

Until he was displaced by Smith & Hawken, the upscale gardening store, he shared the gallery-cum-atelier for several low-rent years with a collective of psychedelic-era glue artists.

All the while, he was busily amassing what is now considered one of the world's largest private collections of pop cultural artifacts from the 1950s through the mid-'80s.

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http://www.marinij.com/ci_3668565?source=most_emailed