#319 Artifacts and Tales: Exploring Hidden Museum Stories with Bob Eckstein

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Jeff Dwoskin 0:28

All right, Sarah, I thank you so much for that amazing introduction and get the show going each and every week, and this week was no exception. Welcome, everybody to Episode 319 of classic conversations. That's right. I'm throwing a bonus at you because we got a special occasion in front of us. Bob Eckstein has returned to the show. He's back. He's got a new book, and we are here to talk all about it. It is so exciting. Last time, Bob was here. We talked all about the history of the snowman. And now Bob has a brand new book, and he wanted to swing by and tell us all about it. dive in deep in just a few seconds. And in these few seconds. Don't miss this full week of creativity come to life, Rob say or Bill Barrett was here earlier this week, episode 318 talking about their movie they just wrapped beyond the rush. Great story. You're gonna love it be inspired. And today we're going to be inspired as well. I'm excited to share my conversation with Bob with you. Enjoy. All right, everyone. I'm excited to welcome back award winning illustrator, writer, cartoonist for The New Yorker, New York Times, Reader's Digest a million other things he wrote, the history of the snowman knows more about snowman than anyone in the world. We're not going into that in this episode. But you can catch episode 225 of classic conversations where Bob and I went deep into the history of snowman. So check that out. Bob's book footnotes from the world's greatest bookstores was a New York Times bestseller and now he's gonna take the world by storm with footnotes from the most fascinating museums, stories and memorable moments from people who love museums. Welcome back to the show, Bob Eckstein. Oh, what's up, Jeff,

Bob Eckstein 2:08

thanks so much. I'm taking you on the road with me. That was great. I love the energy.

Jeff Dwoskin 2:14

It's from years of emceeing and comedy clubs. And

Bob Eckstein 2:19

I'm really glad you brought me back. This is nice, and it's good to see you again.

Jeff Dwoskin 2:24

It's always great with these podcasts, to meet awesome people such as yourself, and then to extend that friendship and the relationship and you have new things and we can talk about them again and spread the word. Once again. I'm excited. I think you mentioned you might have mentioned this book last time we were talking if I remember correctly, but why why museums? Why? Why are we diving into museums? Where did your love for museums stem from you paint it because this book is all its paintings. It's deep dives in the museum's it's all treasure. So what brought you to this path?

Bob Eckstein 2:59

No, it's a complicated question. Because different ways I attack this book. One was how to make the next project as much fun as possible. So I'm always looking not to say like, what do I have to do? But what do I really want to do, as I'm trying to like cherry pick the jobs I do now, I've eliminate some of the things they do to make a living and there is inside, I'm just going to try to do things I really love. So during the pandemic, there was a lot of talk about how museums was struggling. They weren't doing that great attendance was down. And because I love artwork, I kept thinking about museums and how this might raise awareness, but at the same time for selfish reasons. What do I want to do when I get a chance to travel again? Where would I be going? And I was thinking in terms of also like driving to places. I wasn't going to leave and go to Europe, I was going to keep some place in the continent. And I thought I wanted to go back and look at artwork. I mean, I wasn't always a fan of museums growing up by I used to hate museums as a kid because my mom used to drag us to these places and made us read everything as a kid. Were you going? Oh idea of suffocation was Washington DC, which was dreadful. But this time around. It's it was so much fun to go all these museums. Why do

Jeff Dwoskin 4:12

you think museums get such a bad rap? I mean, it's like you when you were saying that I was thinking the same thing. It's like as a kid, a museum is like the last place in the world you want to go. I feel like when you're an adult and you can appreciate museums, they're the greatest places to go. We went to New Orleans, we went to the World War Two Museum. Oh, we spent four hours there. We could have spent eight hours there. It was just incredible. I think my dad instilled in me a love of museums. I remember going back as far as I think we are Niagara Falls and we went to the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum and we will stop and read every single thing along the way and then the whole rest of the family was out there hating us they just whipped right by all right. Tell us guys George's woman by and you know and There's something about the nuance of details that museums bring to the table that there's

Bob Eckstein 5:04

a few reasons. There's a few reasons because our parents drag this to the museums as a kid. So right off the bat, we were already on the wrong step, you know that my my parents were going to read all the signs. And that Jeopardy voice, my mom had like, put on the special invoice when she was going to read the plaques. And it was, it was just terrible. But even older people don't like museums too late, they want to skip parts, they just say I am done. And they are they start drifting off and walking places they're not supposed to where they have those, those red velvet barriers, people are walking behind it. But the thing is, is museums have changed a lot. We have this perception of museums from our olden days. But if you go now, everything has kind of changed a lot. The store is like, let's say just card museums, you can see car collections of any type of car. So I went to a collection in LA, of just James Bond cars, just all the cars from the James Bond movies, it was fantastic. And there was similar things like that museums that are not what you imagined. But when you get there, it's like a whole different experience. Sorry.

Jeff Dwoskin 6:09

And, Robert, I assume you're all daydreaming at this point, right? Your favorite museum. So I thought I'd take a moment to thank you for supporting our sponsors. When you support our sponsors. You're supporting us here at Classic conversations. And that's how we keep the lights on. And now back to my conversation with Bob. One

Bob Eckstein 6:25

over example, is this museum cool. You know what, I'm not going to say the name of it and spoil it for them. But there is a museum out there that's in my book. And I'll let you find out what which one it is that everything is fake. Everything on the exhibit is made up. And I don't even know this until I was like long finished with the tour. And I started asking myself these questions, because it doesn't make sense. How can this be? How can that be? The stuff was so strange and stuff. And then after talking to people, I kind of put two and two together and solve this mystery. So this is totally different than our usual, usual museum experience as children, there's a whole different ballgame now.

Jeff Dwoskin 7:05

Well, now with interactivity taken to like just the nth degree of what you can do. And, you know, it's interesting, like, I remember going to Ellis Island and doing a tour there. And then you can put in headphones. And it can be a guided tour along the way, type in the number. So there's, there's so many ways that you can experience things now. Yes, it's also

Bob Eckstein 7:29

different in a way, what you get out of the museum to museums now can be so much fun. There's a new museum going to soon called the National Comedy center. And when you first go in, they first make a take quick little quiz, so they could determine your sense of humor. And then once you figure out that your sense of humor is they give you a wristband, and the wristband will interact with the room. And then the material that shows up in the room reflects your sense of humor. It's all state of the art and it's like nothing like we've ever experienced in a museum before.

Jeff Dwoskin 8:03

That's incredible. Where's this museum at?

Bob Eckstein 8:05

This is in Jamestown, New York. And let me ask you, Jeff, why isn't in Jamestown, New York. I don't know why. That's the birthplace of Lucille Ball. It started off as a Lucille Ball Museum. But comedy geeks she's really a big part of comedy. And then they spun it out into this new thing where it includes everyone George Carlin is featured and everyone that you could think of all the big comedians are all featured in the center. Like I said, everything is interactive. Now, they make everything more fun. Like for instance, there's a karaoke bar. And there's a whole part where you go on stage and you actually do some stuff and you reenact stuff. So it's like totally different from what we imagine a museum being like, and also the museum's are filled with beautiful young people as well. You go there, you socialize, it's got a party atmosphere. The Brooklyn Museum has parties. I know there's a spam Museum. Spam Museum has one special room. That's a recreation of Monty Python's spam skit, where they go spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, I might have named dropped this before on your show that are friends with Michael Palin. And so I was telling him about this room. And we were going back and forth a bit. But at first, we weren't getting each of his emails, and we found that was in the spam folder. That's a true story. We actually found their emails in the spam folder, but he didn't know about that room but got a great kick out of it. And that's another example of how the museums are kind of surprising you wait until you go you don't realize how much they've changed from from yesteryear.

Jeff Dwoskin 9:35

I want to check out that comedy thing they figured out a way to no one gets offended, right if you like blue.

Bob Eckstein 9:41

That's exactly why they do it. And they it's so subjective humor is so funny. I mean right now and like so geared into this whole topic of how comedy is changing because it's affecting my business affecting my bottom line. I'm now getting cartoons sold and bought at places that a buy meat for certain reasons, though, not just on merit, not just because of the cartoon, but for other outside reasons, and for the same reasons are not getting bought at different publications, because everything now is so optically sensitive. Everyone wants to either be anti woke or woke. And so there's so many sensitivities and quotas are being met and stuff. So it's really a big game changer in comedy. This idea of what is funny, right,

Jeff Dwoskin 10:27

right now I hear let's, in terms of in terms of the book, though, getting back to the book for a second is, this is a collection of paintings, you matched up a painting to the museums, and then kind of talk a little bit about the museum was part of picking the museums for the book, the ones inspired you, from an artistic point of view to be able to visualize and create something. Well, there's

Bob Eckstein 10:50

a whole bunch of factors. And it's like somewhat case by case, like, sometimes I would be given a story that I knew was so great, yes, we're going to put the museum and for instance, I was having lunch with the curator of the Philadelphia Museum. And he was explaining a story in which one day as everyone was coming to work, they caught one of the employees having sex on one of the beds in the period rooms with one of the very sexy security guards that everyone had been talking about how sexy this guy was, and they were caught, and the guy into trouble. And there's a whole story about how they had to get well, I'm trying to say this delicately, I've already put myself in a couple of landmines. With these pauses, I'm trying to be careful what I say. In this case, the case went to HR, in which the person in charge of the museum's personnel said, you know, it says clearly in the employee handbook that no one is allowed to touch the artwork. So I certainly know you're not allowed to do this on the artwork, the person actually got fired. So that sort of story which I cleaned up a bit for the book is definitely a must keeper for the book, as well as stories like Michelle Obama having her first date with Barack Obama at the Art Institute in Chicago, or at the same Museum of Bill Murray contemplating suicide. But this painting in the museum convinced him otherwise. And that changed his life. So stories like that, you know, dictated what my choices were isn't zillion museums in the country, it's very hard to select, there's about 7000 museums, there's about 800, Massachusetts alone, and I did research on about 150 of the best. And then from there, I narrowed it down to 75. And I had to pick them based on how important they were to the community, the value they gave to a family, maybe application, should they stop at this museum, and their reports regarding history, preserving all of our achievements. So there's a lot of different factors. And then of course, it's how sexy was a museum is a beautiful, does it have that wow factor that should be in the book. So you know, painted, and it makes people get excited about going to that destination. So after all of these are said, and I picked out the best ones, and a lot got on the cutting room floor. And hopefully the book does well enough that there's a sequel, because I do feel bad that a lot of museums got cut, who were hoping to be in the book.

Jeff Dwoskin 13:12

Well, that's your fault for getting them excited about being in a museum book and then cutting them.

Bob Eckstein 13:19

Yes, there's some museums that want to be taken out because I had a great story. And they know it was a good story. And then they had second thoughts about getting late in the story out, it was too sensational. And in some cases, I said, No, I'm running the story. And a couple of places. They involve lawyers, and I wasn't worth the aggravation. I have plenty to choose from this. There's a lot of great museums, you know, everyone's so fearful. And I'm getting off the subject of books again. But this spills into what I was touching upon with comedy, people are so afraid of things. And so that's definitely an issue I had with this book is making people happy in regards to what they're worried about the optics of different things getting out and stuff, but I try to hold my own and keep to my guns and try to say, you know, these stories are really entertaining. And people are gonna love hearing the story. They're human.

Jeff Dwoskin 14:11

Can you share one of the stories in a generic way, maybe you don't get sued about the ones that they wouldn't use, like the general gist of it

Bob Eckstein 14:21

was often the story about how someone got excited about a certain Museum and why they wanted to work at that place. So they would describe their first day of work and talk about how emotional they would get over a certain piece of artwork or how it changed their life. And there's nothing bad about that. But they felt all of a sudden they would get in trouble with the employee explaining the process of like, what it was like to try to get work there. One example was a woman who was interviewing at this museum and she said she was so in awe of the work once she was there in person that she got the flop sweats and in the In her interview, she just got she was just a total basket case, because she was surrounded by this majestic artwork. And it was the moment was so big for her. So did nothing wrong with that story. It's a nice story. But then after contemplating it, they said, Oh, I don't want to share this. I don't want my employee they see this. And then I said, Well, that's fine. But there's you didn't see anything wrong. And then they said, Well, if you're going to insist, I'm going to get my lawyers, and then I would hear from people. And I was like, Okay, there's great stories out there, I want to use everyone, but your people are so sensitive about their experience and how they're going to come off. Everyone wants to be seen nice. I have one story I want to share quickly. And that is a museum had this great story about how they had an order installation with live bees. And they regret the decision to allow these bees to be in this piece of artwork. And of course, you know how the story is gonna go, the Beatles got loose, they had to evacuate the museum. And they had to, you know, deal with this total catastrophe. And the artist felt so bad that they came back with these honey lollipops, to give out to all the different patrons who went to visit the museum as sort of a peace offering. And the museum explained how that was worse than the live bees because the honey was melting on all those different pieces of artwork and sculpture. And it was a total disaster. So this story was given to me by one of the curators, and was their most memorable moment on the museum. Of course, the great story.

Jeff Dwoskin 16:34

Follow up question, how many bees are we talking about?

Bob Eckstein 16:37

I think it was 150 150. Bees.

Jeff Dwoskin 16:40

Yeah.

Bob Eckstein 16:41

So they're keeping count, they had to bring in a person who's going to handle it. The person initially in charge of this sort of thing was allergic to bees, adding to the complexity of solving this problem. So long story short, the book goes to print. And then the museum decides they don't want to share the B story that they said that there are keep this to themselves. But the B stories in the book, I try to explain to them that these are the sort of things that people love to read about. People want to hear what people have for challenges. What goes beyond that. Yeah, the curtain that these museums that people have to deal with all the time.

Jeff Dwoskin 17:16

It's a great story. Do you have any similar stories from the La Brea Tar Pits of the dinosaurs getting loose?

Bob Eckstein 17:22

Have you been there?

Jeff Dwoskin 17:24

I haven't. But that is one place. I do want to go all of the of all the museums in your book are the ones that got caught? Have you physically been to them all? You know, or did you revisit them for the book or

Bob Eckstein 17:37

combination? Logistically, it's impossible to go to 150 museums in two years, but I did go to as many as I could. I went to the West Coast, I went to the Midwest, I traveled everywhere and hit as many museums as possible. And in other cases, I had been to the museum already, before the book started, I did go to museums, you know, throughout the East Coast. So I already had stories from them. In some cases, I sent people you know, I'd have someone go in my place, and they would do collaboration with me. So it's a definite team effort. But going back to the tar pits, which are in LA, there's one little thing I remember about them to share is that you have these recreations of these mammoth woolly mammoth, enormous monsters, animals set inside a caged area as if they are alive and like they could get loose under there was so amazing that like they fenced in the area, as if these pieces were going to get loose. And then set behind this fence area, our modern day buildings, you see, like a skyline file lay set next to these dinosaurs.

Jeff Dwoskin 18:45

When someone buys this book, which is a gorgeous book. What do you hope that they get from this book? Are we we trying to get people to go to those museums or just any museums, Rediscover museums,

Bob Eckstein 18:56

ideally, I hope it's a bucket list that people say okay, certifications coming up, whatever you want to do? No, no, we're not going to go on a cruise. But I could go the water parks. Let's see if we can go to some of these museums. So in the book, I've sold, I have selected books that I thought would touch all different groups of people and reach all different demographics of age, and interests. So I feel like there's something in there for everyone does for like train buffs. They're stuffed in there. You know, if you'd like classical artwork, yes. But if you like music, there's music museums. If you're a writer, there's some writing museums. So I feel like there's something there for everyone to say this summer. They're going to hit the museum. And then they go to the museum. They say, Oh my god, I took this for granted. Museums are great. Let's go to another one. And for me, the hair of people enjoy the book and that way to me, that would be like the best thing I know some people said, well, you're showing your artwork. Don't you want people just to say that the pictures look nice and stuff like that. The pictures I did I did the best job I could I enjoy doing it. But that's kind of like background music that's just meant to try to entice you to go and physically go to the museum. Well,

Jeff Dwoskin 20:08

it's amazing. I think people who love museums will want this book. I think if you know someone who loves museums, this makes an amazing gift as well. It's gorgeous. And the art is amazing, Bob, you're amazing. So where can people get their copies? It's just everywhere, like Amazon, do sell it at your website, get a signed copy. What's, what's the dealio with that? Well,

Bob Eckstein 20:32

ideally, as a person who has been advocating for independent bookstores for years, I always ask if you can go to your local bookstore to support them. Any local bookstore can order this book, it's available anywhere. And now I know people want to have the choice of where they buy, they want to buy it on, let's say book shop.org. Book. shop.org is an alternative to Amazon, that gives some of the proceeds to independent bookstores. If you want to buy it from Amazon, you're maybe an Amazon Prime customer, or that's the only alternative you have a lot of people don't have a bookstore near them, you can buy it there as well. So what I suggest is, if you go to my website, there's a link to all of these choices. You can go to maybe six different places to buy the book, so you can pick your preference. And if you go to my website, you can also then sign on to a newsletter and the newsletter is free. And it's great for people who are in the arts like writing or cartooning or illustration, I provide professional tips and advice and they're not just from me, but I happen to know like some of the best in the profession, and I share their advice. I've been asking them for help I learned from them. And then in turn, I share it on my newsletter. And my newsletter has a lot of great subscribers, people who are very funny in the world, including some of the biggest names like let's say Jack Handey, a Sarah Silverman, Ellen ziebell is on there, Michael Palin, all these a comedian subscribe to my newsletter. And he also contribute. And they provide some of the tips and stuff. So it's a fun place, there's some cartoons, and you could sign up with no obligation that you have to pay for anything. As a matter of fact, you can email me personally, if you want the paid version, and I'll give it to you. I especially give it to students and seniors for free, because I just want to spread the word and helps me because it builds my brand. And the more you get to know me the more maybe you'll like my books, and I convinced you to get my books. So it's a sort of a back and forth, I get a lot out of it as well. Awesome.

Jeff Dwoskin 22:34

I'm a subscriber. So yeah, and all of Bob's books are awesome, not just the one we're talking about today, footnotes from the most fascinating museums. And that is one you should check out now. But then check out history of the snowman. And there's a bunch of amazing books, Bob's repertoire.

Bob Eckstein 22:51

And then we mentioned that the website to get to me if you just do like Bob eckstein.com, but I'm sure you'll provide the link.

Jeff Dwoskin 22:58

Yeah, I'll put all the links in the show notes to all your socials. Oh, thanks. Thanks.

Bob Eckstein 23:02

So if you just type in Bob and snowman, you'll find me that way, too. This is fun to talk about museums. Is this like one of the first podcasts and so then I'm doing so far to promote the book. And I'm really excited about what's going to happen where people are really going to get back out there and wipe away the bad memories as kids.

Jeff Dwoskin 23:20

Yeah. And then I'm going to lobby for the Henry Ford Museum, Greenville village fair, the sequel book that's in

Bob Eckstein 23:27

there already. Oh, it's in there. That's a great place to go. And I didn't see it on the list. Where's

Jeff Dwoskin 23:33

it at what's

Bob Eckstein 23:34

in there? It's it's also where the Thomas Edison lab is.

Jeff Dwoskin 23:38

Oh, that's right. It is yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's Greenfield Village. Yeah,

Bob Eckstein 23:42

it's it's a real cluster of smarty pants.

Jeff Dwoskin 23:45

All right. Awesome. That oh, here's the Detroit Institute of Arts is in there. So yeah, I fully endorse this. Okay, now we're good. I mostly endorsed it before now I fully endorse

Bob Eckstein 23:55

it. I felt a lot of love

Jeff Dwoskin 23:57

Bob wishing you all the luck with this and we will talk again one day when you do more goodness thanks for hanging out with me. Thanks so much Jeff. All right, everyone do amazing Bob Eckstein Do not miss footnotes from the most fascinating museums. Bob has so many great books elements of stress illustrated history of the snowman history, the snowman footnotes from the world's greatest bookstores, playbook of cat names, you can get all of it at his website, links in the show notes. Check that out. Please support your local bookstores. Of course, I mentioned Amazon but you know Bob listed awesome great ones as well. And so check those out. And we'll just get the book that's it's gorgeous makes a great gift. I gotta tell you glad Bob swung by another episode is over bonus for everyone. Yeah, you get a bonus. You get a bonus, you get a bonus episode. Thanks again to Bob Epstein. Thanks again to all of you are coming back week after week. It does mean the world to me. It really does. And I'll see you next time.

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