The Museum of Sleep

05/10/2026

We’re compiling our zine, books, prints, stickers (and more to come) for our table at the in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia on Saturday, June 6, 2026.

04/28/2026

Pulp fiction sleep.

04/28/2026

Congratulations on the opening of this new storefront window museum in NYC.

Adam Himebauch’s NYC MOCA tests what counts as an institution, turning a storefront window into a functioning exhibition space.

04/14/2026

Magic lantern slide shows were a very popular form of entertainment from the 17th through 20th centuries, reching their peak in the mid-late 1800s.

"By far the most popular moving magic lantern slides of the nineteenth century was the 'Man eating Rats' (or mice). The sleeping man who swallowed a living mouse (or rat) became a real classic and was produced in a good many designs, in both rackwork and slipping-slide versions. The audience enjoyed the performances, complete with the requisite snoring and chomping and lip-smacking noises and often participated by snoring along with the sleeper or counting the rats consumed."

The following script accompanied this slide:

"Mr. Snore was in a deep sleep. He had been working hard the whole day, and now he is enjoying his well-deserved rest. The old Snore lived up to his name: the whole night long his bearded jaw dropped down every time he took a deep breath and closed again when he breathed out and every time this was accompanied by a loud, penetrating noise. Snore........ poehh......... snore......... poeh........, the whole night long!

I suppose this was the reason that Mrs. Snore did not share his bed. She had moved to the guest room many years before. Yet Mr. Snore was not alone in his bedroom. A weak, squeaking sound meddled with the loud snoring. Suddenly, a curious mouse jumped onto the blankets of his bed. The nosey little animal decided to come closer to Mr. Snore's moving head to examine where these unpleasant sounds were coming from. That was, as we will see, a big mistake. Carefully, hesitantly, the small mouse came closer to the source of the sound. Snore........ poehh......... snore......... poeh.......

Just when it was very close to the big mouth, the jaws opened wide, and a deep breath drew the overconfident animal in the direction of the bearded face.

The poor creature disappeared into the wide-opened mouth of the snoring man. Mr. Snore closed his mouth, chomped, swallowed, spluttered and went on snoring again, not aware of what had happened."

Text: Henc R.A. de Roo

Images and quotes from "The man who ate a living mouse (or maybe even a rat.)" - de Luikerwaal. Link in comments.

03/30/2026

03/30/2026

We have posted about the Dormiphone sleep learning system quite a bit here, but in the Doze zine we were able to go slightly deeper into the history and philosophy of Max Sherover’s breakthrough invention (which we have in our Museum of Sleep collections).

Order a copy on our website (link below ).

03/25/2026

03/15/2026

DOZE, The Museum of Sleep's zine is coming! It's at the printer now and will hopefully be arriving next week. News about ordering will follow.

History, art, literature, memoir...32 pages, all about sleep.

02/28/2026

Max Richter’s 8 hour performance of “Sleep,” in Paris, November 14, 2025.

Join our premiere of Max Richter's recent live performance of "SLEEP" from the Fondation Louis Vuitton on 11 November, 2025, marking the 10th anniversary of ...

02/17/2026

Knowing that we would regret it forever if we missed out on seeing the "L'empire du sommeil" exhibit at the Musée Marmottan Monet, we (meaning: the two founders of the Museum of Sleep) flew from Virginia to Paris last weekend to experience it in person.

We featured the exhibit in a series of posts last year, but will post more of our own experiences this week.

Today is a slideshow of some of the featured pieces on display.

If there is any way for you to see it for yourself before it closes on March 1st, we can't recommend it highly enough.