Let’s start our journey through cannabis museums from Europe, and more specifically Berlin, Germany, where is located the Hemp Museum. Hanf Museum, as it is called in German, is exclusively devoted to the agricultural, manufacturing and industrial as well as legal aspects of the use of hemp. The aim of the exhibition is to do justice to the mind-boggling amount of facets as well as facts and figures associated with this diverse botanical treasure and its application. Starting from the plant and its cultivation, the products and the industry revolving around its utilisation from insulation material, to textile and paper manufacturing, cosmetics and pharmaceutical applications are all explored.
Your next trip could be to Amsterdam, Netherlands, where you can visit Hash, Marihuana and Hemp Museum. With the opening of the Hash, Marihuana and Hemp Museum Gallery, it has become possible for visitors to admire an even wider range of exhibits. With the space constraints of the original Museum, some of these items were simply too large to be displayed; for example the loom from 1903 (which is strung with hemp thread) and the various model sailing ships (which demonstrate just how much hemp rope was required for each vessel).
Paintings depicting everyday men and women enjoying a companionable pipe of cannabis in smoke-houses, the coffeeshops of the 17th Century, can be admired while more modern works by Piet Mondriaan and others are also on display. These paintings are brought to life by the exhibits around them – pipes and smoking devices from around the world, antique weaving and spinning equipment which contains real hemp fibres which visitors can touch.
Now it is time to head to Barcelona, Spain, where you can find The Hash, Marijuana, Canamo and Hemp Museum. The museum presents valuable paintings and prints depicting cannabis use throughout history and rare antiques, such as the various tools and implements used to make hemp into rope, paper and fabrics. Art lovers will be delighted by the original paintings by noted 17th Century artists artists David Teniers the Younger, Cornelis Decker and Herman Saftleven. This important collection of old masters is complemented by a wide array of botanical prints from the 18th and 19thCentury. A medicinal section representing one of the world’s largest collections of medicinal cannabis bottles dating back to the 19th Century testifies to the widespread use of medicinal cannabis in the past.
Our next stop is Vancouver, Canada, where we can visit the Herb Museum. The Herb Museum is home to 5 rooms of exhibits and more than 1200 artifacts from as early as the first century AD all the way to modern day.
Exhibits include: Ancient Cannabis, Medical Marijuana (1720s to present), Industrial Hemp, Hallucinogens/Psychedelics/Entheogens, Opium, Coca, Non-Psychoactive Botanicals, Mushrooms of all varieties magical, medicinal and edible and Coffee, Tea, Tobacco and Chocolate.
It is time to visit USA with one museum, which is not opened yet but it is expected to open in 2016 – The Colorado Museum of Cannabis and Hemp History in Denver, Colorado, which will be dedicated to Preserving and Presenting Cannabis and Hemp History in a Safe, Educational, and Entertaining environment.
The next museum that you can visit in USA is Oaksterdam Cannabis Museum in Oakland, California. The Museum has been a focus of the community in the heart of Oakland California since 2011, in the world famous Oaksterdam District. It has been the only US cannabis museum to have had regular hours open to the public and a living medical marijuana garden on display.
Our final stop today will be Cannabis House, the only cannabis museum in New Zealand, located on Dunedin. Arriving at the museum, visitors are greeted by a large green door, flanked by two bay windows peeking into the Legalize Cannabis Movement office and the one-roomed museum.