What say you of a glass jar half-filled with the actor Russell Crowe’s moldering urine?
Of this treasured Croweian specimen displayed amongst fossilized penis bones, foraged skulls, the taxidermied remains of a mermonkey, and hundreds of other obscene curios?
Mailed as an unsolicited, “special delivery parcel” to a Mr. Viktor Wynd, Mr. Crowe’s considerable leak was allegedly culled by a man with whom the actor “got very drunk” at Claridge’s one day. Upon hearing of Mr. Wynd’s singular collection of artifacts and absurdities, Mr. Crowe volunteered his excreta and insisted it be displayed, at least according to the crudely scrawled note which sits upon Mr. Crowe’s piss at The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History in London.
How do you feel about a shrine to The Rolling Stones that includes an empty box of 100mg Viagara — prescribed by one Dr. Odwyer at a certain Day Lewis Pharmacy — and a note from a Ms. Maria de Silva explaining the jar full of used, cum-soaked, lightly blood-stained condoms on which the shrine is centered? “I, Maria de Silva, was working in the Hill Club 22nd August 2003 and cleaned the room The Rolling Stones used,” she writes, “and found these condoms and Viagara.” The letter, written on official stationery from The Hill Club in Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka, is dated May 10, 2008. No explanation is provided as to what Ms. de Silva did with the dirty condoms from the point of collection in 2003 to the point of unsolicited distribution to Mr. Wynd in 2008.
If such things are of interest, perhaps too would be a bird’s nest of the actor Russell Brand’s pubic hair, sourced by a Jane Doe at a Camden Town salon and sent to Mr. Wynd, in part, because her “son thinks [his] shop is the most amazing place in the whole universe.”
“I gave him an all-over shave,” she writes of Brand, “and thought you’d like his Pube’s.” “Pube’s” is underlined.
Within two other illuminated glass jars in this London museum basement—this claustrophobia of obscure literature (“Bare Back Rider,” by A.N. LeChance, part of the Adam’s Gay Readers series), mummified creatures, demonic dolls, and of course a casket containing some of the original darkness Moses summoned to Earth—rest the malodorous remains of defacation expelled by the singers Kylie Minogue and Amy Winehouse. Number twos, to be clear. The authenticity of Ms. Minogue’s poo (sand-colored, craggy, and spindly like dead coral) is guaranteed by Mr. Wynd himself, who “solemnly swears” to witnessing Minogue “doing” the poo December 10, 2010. Mr. Wynd similarly swears to watching Ms. Winehouse poo into her jar (hers is dark brown, substantial, oozing gravitas) on November 25, 2010, roughly eight months prior to her untimely death.
They are, for the moment, the only two celebrity shit displays at this esoteric London museum, though perhaps not for long. Mr. Wynd invites celebrity visitors to present an empty jar on display to the reception staff and to return it, filled with their poop, to help him “build our collection.” Beyond the fame which surely follows the exposition of one’s feces in the museum, Mr. Wynd also pays: £60 for A-listers, £50 for B-lists, £40 for C-lists, and £20 for D-lists.
Of course, celebrity excretions are but just a few of the arcane items of interest the pedantic collector Mr. Wynd parades in the macabre spectacle he calls The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History. However, lest I spoil any further surprise at what sits in these dusty glass cases, at what hangs from the ceiling (grip the dead man’s hands if you dare), and what lies within a long wooden table, I simply bid you squirrel away an hour or two, next time you’re in London, to see for yourself this wonderfully objectionable and, in the words of Mr. Wynd, “incoherent vision of the world displayed through wonder enclosed within a tiny space.”
On the way out, you can reflect upon all that you’ve seen downstairs in the upstairs bar, a moody cocktail joint teeming with taxidermy. And once you’ve finished reflecting upon all of that, you can grab a choice of gift shop souvenirs that includes a walrus penis bone (£395), edible chapulines, locusts, buffalo worms, or armor tail scorpions (£10), and a creamy chocolate anus (£6).
What say you?
The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History is located at 11 Mare Street in Dalston, London. +44 020 7998 3617. Open Wednesday to Sunday from 11am – 10:30pm. £4, including coffee/tea and a biscuit.
