No geek’s visit to Seattle is complete without a trip to MoPOP, the Museum of Pop Culture. This 140,000-square-foot museum is packed to the gills with exhibits showcasing the best of pop culture. MoPOP’s collection includes over 85,000 items spanning the history and breadth of the pop culture canon, such as Captain Kirk’s command chair from Star Trek; a Proton Pack from Ghostbusters; a Pris costume from Blade Runner; an Atari 2600 joystick, a guitar Jimi Hendrix played at Woodstock; handwritten notes from Kurt Cobain; an animation cel from Sailor Moon… are you sold yet?
MoPOP was founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen with a star-studded advisory board that included legends like Ray Bradbury and George Lucas. Genre-fiction fans will appreciate the depth and breadth of heritage and history evident in MoPOP’s diverse collections, which pay homage to a wide range of media forms through different eras. Currently on view are exhibitions on fantasy, indie games, Nirvana, horror films, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Haring, and more. This highly interactive museum offers activities for all ages and is worth devoting a day to. A significant part of the museum is devoted to music, particularly the grunge movement that emerged from Seattle in the 1980s. Learn about the greats, then go record your own songs in the state-of-the-art Jam Studio on museum-provided instruments. And the photo ops? Endless.
MoPOP is one of Seattle’s most distinctive buildings. This Frank Gehry-designed building is made up of 21,000 custom-made metal shingles comprising 3,000 panels that ripple with an ever-changing iridescence depending on the time of day and where the viewer is standing. We recommend taking the Seattle Monorail from the convention center to Seattle Center, where MoPOP is located. During your future visit to Seattle Worldcon, you might want to spend a little time visiting with the geeky past in MoPOP’s exhibits.
Fifi Ding is a journalist and travel writer. She has interviewed numerous figures in the world of entertainment and genre fiction, including actor Nathan Fillion and manga artist Hiro Mashima.