The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities
a Gothic tribute to the strange and unusual
A version of this article was first published on Substack in December 2022 as number 7 in the Mixed Media series. The current version, which is enhanced with extra illustrations, is for the benefit of new subscribers who missed it the first time around: everyone deserves the chance to enter the surreal world of Viktor Wynd…
ON EXITING the Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art and Natural History in London you feel as if you’ve been bopped on the head like a cartoon character, tweeting birdies fluttering around your stunned cranium. There’s a lot to absorb. Is it a museum? An art installation? Is it the work of an artist, a scientist, a historian, an occultist, an explorer, all of these or none? I couldn’t say for sure, but if you like something macabre, original, nauseating, fascinating, funny, beautiful, vulgar, historical, hysterical or any combination thereof, you might want to pop along.
It was December 2017. After going to see some public sculpture in Bethnal Green in East London1 my other half and I decided to pay a visit to the Viktor Wynd Museum in Hackney. We must have seen it on a tourism website, or in the culture pages of a newspaper. We arrived a little early and it wasn’t yet open, so we decided to retreat to a nearby coffee shop to kill some time. As we waited to cross the road I glanced behind me and saw a well-dressed gent in a flamboyant, stripey suit leave the museum, then hurry along the street in our direction, jacket flapping in the breeze. Viktor Wynd, we presumed. We’ll never know for sure, but it certainly looked a lot like him.
A little while later we made our way back to the museum, an odd-looking place with a frontage that featured bizarre window displays of strange, intricate tableaux consisting of stuffed mice clad in various disguises. Venturing in we were greeted warmly by a cheerful young woman who asked whether we wanted a drink. The reception counter doubled as a bar where alcoholic beverages were served, and the catalogue informed us that every weekday from 6pm until 7pm, the Last Tuesday Society had an absinthe hour called L’heure Verte. Exotic. We politely declined and paid the entrance fee, which was then a measly £5. The free catalogue alone must have made a sizeable dent in that. I was already impressed by this labour of love.
The collection is housed in a tiny space consisting of two floors connected by a treacherous metal spiral staircase. It comprises artifacts ancient and modern, collected and assembled by the self-described “artist, author, lecturer, impresario and pataphysicist”. I mean no disrespect by the use of the term “self-described”, quite the reverse, it is merely that I haven’t decided how much of Viktor Wynd is real, and how much artistic make-believe, and I don’t see that it actually matters. Not knowing only adds to the mystery.
We tiptoed through the darker recesses of human experience, both temporal and spiritual; phantasmagoria with a sprinkle of humour. There was a small exhibition of the art of the Edwardian occultist Austin Osman Spare (in the Spare Room, of course), a shrine to the renowned dandy Sebastian Horsley2 which included his red sequinned Savile Row suit, interesting curios from the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle, Cornwall, erotica, masks, taxidermy, treasures and curiosities. Nothing was grouped or classified. It was all crammed together for the intrepid visitor to explore and discover, to be delighted and repulsed, offended and fascinated.
If you have a strong stomach and an open mind you might enjoy this strange little place. I wouldn’t recommend it for children or elderly grandparents, although one’s capacity to be shocked, or not, does not necessarily bear any relationship to one’s age. I myself was occasionally unsettled by the vulgarity of some exhibits, disgusted by others. I was also by turns delighted, amused and stimulated, and it is for you the viewer to decide your own tolerances, which might in part be the point. As I peered at the exhibits I was rarely certain which were real, or indeed, if any of them were real.
If you want an experience to set your brain fizzing, this one’s for you. Just go easy on the absinthe.
Elisabeth Frink’s Blind Beggar and his Dog (1958) at the Cranbrook Estate next to Roman Road.
Sebastian Horsley (1962-2010). Dandy, artist, writer, and bohemian. A very outré character. In his obituary of Horsley in The Independent Tim Fountain said “If Sebastian Horsley hadn't existed it's doubtful anyone would have had the nerve to invent him.” I recommend Horsley’s autobiography, Dandy in the Underworld.
I absolutely loved your article on the Viktor Wynd Museum! Your vivid descriptions make me feel like I’ve wandered through its surreal corridors myself. The eclectic mix of macabre and historical artefacts is fascinating. Your storytelling, combined with the quirky illustrations, brings this curious museum to life. Brilliant work!
Our country or eccentrics has spawned some strange little places. Ut as you say, they do seem labours of love. Taxidermy, i always find amusing. Ditto waxworks. They feel of another era. I remember a police museum in Manchester I stumbled across with my son by chance one summer holidays. That was quirky too. Long may they continue!