It’s hard to tell what’s stranger: Viktor Wynd’s Museum of Curiosities, or Viktor Wynd himself.
The London-based Wynd is a character straight out of a creepy black-and-white movie. His museum is just as bizarre, featuring everything from animal skulls and McDonald’s Happy Meal toys to condoms confiscated from a hotel room where the Rolling Stones slept.
“I think I’m probably rather bored and depressed, so anything that makes my eyes sparkle and wakes me up and distracts me from the inanity of life gives me joy,” Wynd told Barcroft TV.
The “feces de resistance” in Wynd’s museum is probably the jar that supposedly contains the late pop singer Amy Winehouse’s poop.
Wynd, ever the entrepreneur, charges an additional fee to customers who want a whiff.
Wynd opened the museum as an artistic prank in 2009.
“In the beginning, it was meant to be a bogus curiosity shop, an attack on shops from one who hates shops and shopping, stuffed with incredibly useless and revolting things, staffed by actors who would perform a script on unsuspecting customers,” Wynd said.
The joke, however, turned out to be on Wynd. The Museum attracts as many as 500 paying customers a week. “There are customers who come down take one look and leave ― quite often in a hurry,” he said. “But we do get the customers who come here and realize this place has been built for them and this is their home and they feel happy here.”