Roadside America's site of the week is the "Last Supper Museum" in Douglas, Arizona. I haven't been yet but I'm frequently near Douglas, and am excited to go check it out. It sounds sufficiently weird to be worth a visit. The museum was created in February 2023 by Eric Braverman, who at age 7 in 1972, saw a life-sized wax version of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper at a museum in Phoenix. He bought a snow globe of the painting in the gift shop, and has been collecting versions ever since. Roadside America describes the museum's collection:
Between 400 and 500 Last Suppers are on display, which overwhelms some visitors even though it's a small fraction of the overall collection. The Florys' [Reverend Charles and Wilma Flory, who ran a Last Supper Museum in Greensburg, Indiana that is now permanently closed] conservative contributions give the museum a solid foundation, with the familiar da Vinci dinner party reproduced in paintings, carvings, ceramics, and needlepoint — as well as in occasional oddities such as a Last Supper etched into an ostrich egg and a lump of coal.
Eric's madcap aesthetic, however, is what makes the museum memorable. There's no need to ask who collected the Last Suppers of rubber duckies, clowns, cutlery, Jamaican Rastafarians, Kachina dolls, PEZ dispensers, and Tupperware. There are Last Suppers featuring the cast of the Simpsons, South Park, Star Wars, the Avengers, and icons of American breakfast cereals. A Last Supper has been built inside a bottle, baked into a cookie, rolled from banana leaves, and painted onto a woman's corset and a Frisbee. Eric's original snow globe is on display, as is a room key from the Leonardo da Vinci Hotel.
Read more about the museum here. It sounds awesome! I'll go as soon as I can, and will report back, with photos! If you ever get to Douglas, also go see the Art Car World. Both museums are featured in this video (the Last Supper Museum starts at 2:40 and Art Car World at 14:27).
