The museum is open every day and by July 2011 was attracting up to 11,000 visitors annually. The museum's guest book includes comments such as, "I've never seen so many penises–and I went to boarding school!" (from a New Zealand visitor), "They're bigger in the USA," (from someone from Wisconsin) and "Is there a vagina museum?" (There used to be a pop-up museum called "Museum of Vaginal Imagination" in Rotterdam in the Netherlands and a Vagina Museum opened in London in 2017.)

Human penis

thumb|left|Penis and scrotum of a 95-year old Icelandic man

For many years, the museum sought to obtain a human penis. Sigurður was able to obtain human testicles and a foreskin from two separate donors; the foreskin was donated by Iceland's National Hospital after an emergency circumcision operation.

The museum has so far received pledges from four men—an Icelander, a German, an American and a Briton—to donate their penises. Canadian film-maker Zach Math comments that the American, Tom Mitchell, "is an ordinary guy but he has this quirk where he thinks of his penis as a separate entity from his body—Elmo. He has this dream that he wants it to be the most famous penis in the world." The donor also tattooed his penis with the Stars and Stripes to make it look more appealing. He says that "I've always thought it'd be really cool for my penis to be the first true penis celebrity" and has made it the star of its own comic book, Elmo: Adventures of a Superhero Penis.

The Icelandic donor was a 95-year-old man from nearby Akureyri who was said to have been a womaniser in his youth and wanted to donate his penis to the museum to ensure his "eternal fame". Sigurður has considered donating his own penis to the museum when he dies but said that it depends on his wife: "If she dies first, my specimen would go in here. If I die first, well I can't say. She might say no."

In May 2022, the museum announced that it would display a plaster cast of Jimi Hendrix's erect penis, created in 1968 in Chicago by Cynthia Plaster Caster. The famous groupie, whose real name was Cynthia Albritton, donated the item to the museum in April 2022, shortly before her death. In December 2024, the museum began displaying a confirmed erect plaster cast of Matt Barr, measuring over 36cm, the largest ever verified cast of a human penis.alt=Plaster model of Matt Barr, the owner of the world's biggest penis, on display alongside other human casts at the Icelandic Phallological Museum|thumb|A plaster lifecast of Matt Barr, cited by the museum as the world's largest penis

Film

The museum is the subject of The Final Member, a film by Canadian documentarians Zach Math and Jonah Bekhor. It profiles Sigurður and his quest to obtain a human penis for the museum, telling the story of the American and Icelandic donors and examining the quasi-taboo nature of the museum's collection. Bekhor says: "I wouldn't say it's a Rorschach test, but depending on how you react to it really says a lot about what your relationship is with that element of the human anatomy. It's a really interesting phenomenon and we're really curious to see how audiences respond." The film premiered on 1 May 2012 at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.

See also

  • List of museums in Iceland
  • List of sex museums
  • Pricasso
  • Vagina Museum

References

Further reading

  • archive