American Swedish Institute

I got here a half hour before closing time and they were nice enough to just wave me in. The building alone is worth visiting—the museum is housed in a beaux arts mansion from the turn of the century whose owner was the publisher of a Swedish-language newspaper. Many of the rooms have amazing decor and matching Swedish stoves. The bookstore and handicrafts store are great for a browse and they have many books in Swedish and other Scandinavian languages, including language tapes and dictionaries…

If you’re not into Scandanavia, this museum will be less interesting to you, but they have a few pretty good exhibits about immigration and the history of Swedish-America, which at one point was a pretty influential diaspora that was doing its best to not melt into the rest of us. They also had an exhibit about Peter Nilson, a Swedish artist/scientist who takes amazing closeups of cells—you’ve probably seen some of his work, since he’s always on Nova.