The Hattiesburg Convention Commission, which dreamed up the project, keeps the museum's exact location a secret to encourage visitors to explore the walkable downtown district of this historic city, located about 70 miles north of the state's Gulf Coast.
Billed as the state's tiniest showcase for collections "of all types from the whimsical . . . to the macabre," the Hattiesburg Pocket Museum is a four-shelf cabinet of curiosities housed in the window of a formerly boarded-up storeroom.
While you're walking around, you'll encounter peaceful parks, important sites in the state's African American history, and a growing arts scene.
The Pocket Museum is part of that: Its quirky displays, which change each month, are designed to "inspire, delight, and intrigue" those who discover the spot. The first exhibit, in August, was dedicated to Swiss Army knives; September was all about rubber ducks.
For October, things got creepy with a series of vignettes evoking twisted crimes—think tiny old-timey dental tools a demented doctor could use to wreak mayhem.
It's not just the museum window that invites lingering. The surrounding alleyway is decorated with murals and dotted with little surprises, including nine ceramic cat figurines and a family of inch-high plastic people (the kind that live on model train sets) having adventures on ledges and in crevices of brick buildings.
If you're interested in getting in on the fun other than as a spectator, you can submit your own collection for consideration as a future monthly exhibit at the Pocket Museum. After all, your stash of potato chips that look like the Virgin Mary must be seen.
Guidelines for submissions from the public are at the Hattiesburg Convention Commission website. The curator told the Washington Post that exhibits are already planned through September 2021.
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