The Taubman's dramatic facade; photos by Nicole Pensiero

Looming large amid the many Beaux Arts and Federal-style buildings in downtown Roanoke, Va., the striking Taubman Museum of Art really stands out.

Designed by Tennessee native Randall Stout –– a protégée of celebrated architect Frank Gehry –– the Taubman’s dramatic steel-and-glass façade is strongly reminiscent of Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

Stout designed the 81,000 square-foot Roanoke facility to “evoke the drama of the mountainous landscape and the gritty industrial-area building culture.” Perhaps. But the design spoke to me on a purely visceral level: I immediately wanted to check out the inside.

The two-story museum’s varied permanent collection spans works by American masters, such as Winslow Homer and Maurice Prendergast; regional artists from the Southeast and the immediate vicinity; and folk and so-called “visionary” artists.

A contemporary gallery at the Taubman

During a recent visit, I especially enjoyed the offbeat wearable “Soundsuits” by Chicago-based artist/dancer Nick Cave (not to be confused with the broody rock star of the same name), which enjoyed a three-month run through the end of 2011.

Currently, the Taubman is showcasing “Watch It! Video Art,” a survey of pioneering video artists, such as Laurie Anderson, William Wegman and Nam June Paik, through Feb. 9; “In the Moment: Light, Vision and Memory,” a survey of 125 years of photos from The Roanoke Times newspaper, through March 4; and “Metempsychosis: The Power of Transformation,” which pairs dissimilar works to spur conversations about art and the world around us, through May 1.

Although the Taubman’s current home is only about three-years-old, the museum’s history can be traced back to the mid-’60s, when the city opened a fine arts center. That facility in 1980 morphed into the Roanoke Museum of Fine Arts, and three years later moved from a location outside the city to downtown’s Center in the Square.

The move to the current downtown site  –– and construction of the new building –– was meant to raise the Taubman’s profile, but due to financial issues, the museum has scaled back its ambitions to have more of a regional focus.

Still, for any Roanoke visitor, the Taubman is not to be missed.

The waiting room in Vienna; photos by Ramona Zacharias

You may not have to delve into your subconscious to fully appreciate the significance of the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna, but you will have to use your imagination.

The building at Berggasse 19 housed Freud’s living quarters and office for nearly 50 years before he fled with his family to London in June, 1938, following the Nazi takeover of Austria.

Freud died in London a little more than a year later in September, 1939, at the age of 83.

Several decades later, his daughter, Anna, who was also a pioneering psychoanalyst, donated many of her father’s possessions –– but not his famed psychoanalytic couch –– to establish the Vienna museum.

Although the Vienna site features Sigmund Freud’s waiting room couch, the more famous sofa, as well as the majority of Freud’s collection of Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Oriental antiquities, are on display at another, larger Freud Museum in London.

The more sparsely decorated facility in Vienna is still highly atmospheric, however. Climbing the stone steps, seeing the “Prof. Dr. Freud: 3-4” sign on the door –– the numbers referred to the hour he reserved to see his patients every day –– and standing in the waiting room conjures up a sense of the groundbreaking work that transpired within those walls.

The remaining rooms in the apartment contain family photographs and personal effects, including a portion of Sigmund Freud’s antiquities collection and signed copies and first editions of his works.

Another section of the permanent exhibit offers video footage of the Freuds from the 1930s that’s narrated by Anna. The library, with some 35,000 volumes, claims to be the largest collection of works on psychoanalysis in Europe.

For anyone who’s ever sat on “the couch” or has been guilty of a Freudian slip, a visit to Freud’s Vienna home will put everything in perspective –– or give you someone to blame.

O’Connor wrote her most famous Southern Gothic works at Andalusia in Milledgeville, Georgia,but she lived in this three-story home on Lafayette Square until just before the age of 13.

While Andalusia is a necessary pilgrimage for literary tourists, her childhood home has only relatively recently established itself in the landscape of Mary Flannery O’Connor’s biography.

The three-story building had been divided into apartments by the time a nonprofit foundation acquired it in 1989. Beyond an historical marker and limited tours, little had been done to erase decades of normal use.

Eventually, however, the bottom two floors were restored to the time when the O’Connor family lived here, from 1925-1938.

Although I’ve read a number of O’Connor’s stories and recognize her greatness, I’m mostly a geek for house museums, for anything to do with writers, and for women’s history — and this little house on the square rolls all those together into one evocative package.

The pretty home contains an eclectic collection of artifacts, including O’Connor’s baby buggy, family photographs, books, some original furniture.

Photos by Sophia Dembling

Mary Flannery O’Connor dropped the “Mary” because she wondered if anyone “would buy the books of a Catholic washerwoman,” according to “resident writer” Toby Aldrich, who leads colorful and engaging tours.

An aspiring novelist, Aldrich lucked into renting an apartment on the top floor of the historic building when he moved to Savannah in 2005, after Katrina wiped out his home in Mississippi.

After the two renovated lower floors were opened to the public in 2009, he was hired as live-in caretaker and docent.

O’Connor was a character from an early age, Aldrich continues. “By about four or five years old, she was an adult.”

She swore off dolls and by around age six was calling her parents by their first names.

Flannery was opinionated — even stern. In childhood photos, she has a “leave me alone or I’ll bite you demeanor,” Aldrich observes. In her copy of the moralistic children’s classic The Water Babies, she wrote “Not a very good book.”

From windows in the back of the house, you can see the garden where five-year-old Flannery taught a couple of chickens to walk backwards, as documented by a skeptical British news organization. This was, she said later, “the most exciting thing that ever happened to me.”

The third floor is closed to the public; it’s where Aldrich lives and writes. Before moving to Savannah, he had completed three novels and failed to get them published. He read  The Habit of Being, a collection of more than 800 of O’Connor’s letters, and ”encountered Flannery’s insistence that her stories be crafted so that everything works,” he says. “I am in the process of doing that with what I had so poorly written before.”

And he does so in front of a window overlooking Lafayette Square and St. John the Baptist Cathedral, unchanged since little Mary’s day.

Entrance Hall; photos by Ramona Zacharias

Tucked away in the mountains just outside Innsbruck, Austria, is a hidden jewel of a museum. Swarovski Kristallwelten, or Crystal Worlds, celebrates the art of the Austrian maker of jewelry and collectibles. Opened in 1995 to mark the Swarovski centenary, the museum is made up of 14 subterranean “Chambers of Wonder.”

My particular visit took place on a cold, dismal day, and the gray ambiance made the looming giant’s head at the entrance seem all the more foreboding. What was I going to encounter in those caves en route to the museum’s ultimate prize — the Crystal Stage —  the world’s largest Swarovski shop?

Once granted access behind the giant, the museum opens with a wow: A 36-by-138 foot-high clear wall holds millions of miniature crystals. Lying in stark contrast at the foot of this wall is the 300,000-carat Centenary, the largest manufactured crystal in the world.

From the Entrance Hall, the museum’s path progresses through chamber after chamber, each seemingly more unusual than the next.

Brian Eno's 55 Million Crystals

Some galleries are beautiful: Alexander McQueen and Tord Boontje present “Winter’s Dream,” a glistening tree made up of polished steel branches and thousands of crystals.

Some are intimidating: The enormous accordion and walking stick loom over “The Giant’s Belongings,” a room dedicated to some of the personal effects of the giant who guards the museum’s entrance.

And some are just plain strange: “La Primadonna Assoluta” features a film clip of soprano Jessye Norman’s rendition of the aria,“Thy Hand, Belinda” from the opera Dido and Aeneas, on a crystal backdrop.

An otherworldly passageway

A personal favorite was Oliver Irschitz’s “Ice Passage,” a dark walkway that lights up as you progress, and gives an audible cracking noise with each step, as if you are literally treading on thin ice.

Since fall, 2010, “Famos” has been on display. Created by Russian artistic duo The Blue Noses, this exhibit recreates famous buildings of the world in crystal. These miniatures include the Taj Mahal, the Empire State Building, the Great Pyramid of Giza and Lenin’s Mausoleum.

In typical Austrian fashion, Swarovski Crystal Worlds each May holds an annual chamber music festival, dubbed Music in the Giant.  The museum also offers children’s workshops and has its own café.

Even if you don’t have a car during your visit to Innsbruck, you can access the museum, via a free shuttle bus running every two hours from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from the center.

Or you can always take a virtual tour on the museum’s website. Crystal Worlds, whether live or virtual, is truly a sight you won’t soon forget.

Hall of Names; by Yossi Ben David, Yad Vashem

Emotions come rushing to the fore at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem, a scholarly center and museum to document, research and commemorate the Holocaust.

Appropriately located on the Mount of Remembrance, the center’s museum seeks to combine a sobering history lesson with a powerful tribute to the millions who died.

The museum’s nine galleries and an epilogue, located inside an almost 600-foot-long, triangular concrete structure completed in 2005, start with the pre-Holocaust “World that Was,” continue through the Nazi’s “Final Solution,” and wrap with the survivors’ attempts to “Return to Life.”

Helping bring the history alive are personal items, such as wallet photographs recovered from burning corpses when the death camps were liberated by the Allies, diary entries written by the young and fearful at the concentration camps, and a large display case filled with the victims’ shoes.

Artifacts, ranging from bunk beds and uniforms, to an actual train car used to transport Jews to Auschwitz, help fill in the details of this horrific chapter.

Perhaps, one of the most moving exhibits is the Children’s Memorial. Housed in an underground room outside the main building, the display is lit by a few candles that, via the use of strategic mirrors, appear to be stars.

Garden of the Righteous; by Ramona Zacharias

Meanwhile, a woman’s voice on a loop reads names of some of the 1.5 million children who died in the Holocaust, along with their ages and birthplaces.

Back in the main museum is a final room that epitomizes the purpose of Yad Vashem, which was founded nearly 60 years ago.

Designed by world renowned architect (and Haifa native) Moshe Safdie, The Hall of Names is a memorial to each of the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust.

The shelves on the walls of this circular room hold biographical information entered on forms called “Pages of Testimony” for two million of those victims, with room reserved for the remaining four. At the center of the Hall of Names is a 10-meter-high conic structure with photographs of 600 victims: men, women and children.

It is Yad Vashem’s ambition to ultimately name every casualty. The Shoah Victims’ Names Recovery Project, recognizing that time is running out for survivors of World War II, is urgently calling on them to submit whatever information they can in order to help commemorate those who were lost. An online database allows visitors to search for and submit names.

Incredibly, the volunteer project has succeeded in identifying over four million victims.

This comprehensive effort speaks to the Biblical passage that inspired the facility’s name: “And to them will I give in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name (a “yad vashem”)… hat shall not be cut off.” (Isaiah 56:5)

Display at Guinness Storehouse; by Ramona Zacharias

By my tastes, a trip to Dublin wouldn’t be complete without making a stop at the Guinness Storehouse at St. James Gate.

The number one attraction in Ireland and one of the world’s top brand experiences, this multi-floor, self-guided tour offers a full pour of history and information about the country’s most famous brew.

My particular tour happened on a very significant day in Guinness — and Irish — history: September 23, Arthur’s Day.

The holiday celebrates the date in 1759 when Arthur Guinness signed a legendary 9,000-year lease, giving him a disused brewery for an annual rent of £45, and the ability to mass produce “black gold.”

Snow Patrol, the Manic Street Preachers, Mick Jones of the Clash and many others were on site to help celebrate by raising a pint to Arthur for his lasting contributions. The atmosphere was giddy that day, but I suspect a visit almost any time of the year would be festive.

I started on the main floor, and while waiting for the tour to begin, my attention started to wander to the two-floor store behind me. Clothing, coasters, posters, fudge, shot glasses — I knew I would be spending a fair bit of time and a good chunk of change in there a little later on.

But then Zelda, my tour guide, drew my attention upwards. We were actually standing in the world’s largest pint glass.

Guinness Storehouse, circa 1955; courtesy of the brewer

The glass and steel structure was built in a circular style, narrow at the museum’s starting point with an increasingly larger circumference from floor to floor. At the top is Gravity Bar, where I later sipped a complimentary pint of the black stuff and enjoyed a 360-degree view of Dublin.

The museum is mostly what you would expect: a history of the company, facts about Arthur and interactive displays that highlight Guinness’ four ingredients (water, barley, hops and yeast) and its brewing process.

You can even sample some roasted barley. It’s not the taste test most visitors are seeking, but is interesting all the same.

The Advertising Section, where I watched early commercials and saw some classic posters, provides a nostalgic trip down memory lane. The restaurant (about halfway up the pint) serves a great Guinness stew.

There are, however, some out-of-the-ordinary exhibits to highlight. The “Genealogy Pods” allow visitors to trace their ancestry to see if a family member ever worked at the brewery.

Even more popular is a spot to learn to “pour the perfect pint.” There are only six steps, but they make all the difference to the taste.

Did you know, for example, that the initial draft needs to settle precisely 119.5 seconds before being topped up? Or that you need to use a Guinness glass, with the harp on it, for measuring purposes?

A word of caution, however: Once you undergo this training process, you’ll never order another Guinness without watching your bartender like a hawk.

Cheers — or as the Irish say — Slainte!

Check out this article to read about other factories-turned-museums.

National Museum of American Jewish History on Independence Mall

On Philadelphia’s Independence Mall, the story of the nation’s founding may seem like an all-too-familiar tale.

The Cliff’s Notes version goes like this: Independence Hall is where the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, and ratified the U.S. Constitution in 1787. The Liberty Bell, cracks and all, became a symbol of the abolitionist movement and of efforts to attain freedom around the globe.

In the past decade, the historical events embodied by these icons have gained new context, as the Liberty Bell moved to its own interpretative center, and a museum dedicated to explaining the Constitution opened at the northern end of the mall.

Now several new attractions on or adjacent to the mall are adding their own chapters, some with unexpected twists, to the traditional understanding of American freedoms and how they came to be.

The National Museum of American Jewish History, a major facility affiliated with the Smithsonian, opened its dazzling new home in late 2010. The President’s House commemorative site, which marks the spot where President George Washington and John Adams, as well as nine enslaved Africans, once lived, before the nation’s capital shifted to Washington, D.C., also was recently unveiled to decidedly mixed reviews for its storytelling and scholarship.

Meanwhile, a 15-minute 3D film, Liberty 360, premiered last fall and is now offering regular showings in a theater across from Independence Hall. The movie, narrated by Benjamin Franklin, offers yet another perspective on the goings-on that led to the nation’s founding.

A series of staircases serve to link floors and historic periods in the museum.

By far, the most significant addition to the historic area is the $150 million NMAJH. The newly constructed 100,000 sq.-ft. facility by the same architect as Washington, D.C.’s, Newseum/Freedom Forum traces the journey of Jews in America, from the arrival of the first Jewish settlers in 1654 from Brazil to the present day.

The museum seeks to place the Jewish experience and struggles to find acceptance in the new world, in the context of what was happening in politics, business, science and pop culture in the U.S. and around the globe.

On each floor, vantage points offer sweeping views of Independence Mall, to further establish a visual link to the more famous monuments. Two sculptures –– a 19^th century marble monument called “Religious Liberty” just outside the striking contemporary building and a 21^st century LED “Beacon” that “flickers” at the top corner of the museum’s glass façade –– seek to underline the sense of the Jews’ quest for freedom being intertwined with the larger American story.

Inside, the museum spotlights prominent American Jews, as well as lesser known figures, such as 19^th century pioneers Fanny and Julius Brooks, whose journey westward is brought to life with a covered wagon, dress up clothing and a virtual campfire.

The “Only in America” Gallery/Hall of Fame spotlights 18 “stars,” including Broadway composer Irving Berlin, polio vaccine inventor Jonas Salk, cosmetics titan Estee Lauder, Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax and uber entertainer Barbra Streisand, with specially produced video testimonials paired with artifacts, such as Berlin’s upright piano and Streisand’s costumes from Yentl.

Typewriter used in the Steven Spielberg film Schindler's List; photo courtesy of museum

Elsewhere, short films focus on Yiddish theater, Hollywood moguls, the civil rights movement and the creation of the state of Israel.

The museum follows a timeline, beginning on the fourth floor with the Colonial period, and winding its way down to the current era on the second floor.

In one section, you can re-live the immigration experience by tapping a touch screen with various identification documents and trying to answer questions posed to new arrivals by federal officials. In another area, old-fashioned school desks represent tenement life, and a black-and-white video footage, coupled with purple lights, conjure up a fancy dress Jewish Heritage Ball from 1871.

For me, exhibits spanning the latter half of the 20^th century on Jews’ shift from cities to suburbs, the summer camp phenomenon, the bar mitzvah tradition, the Borscht Belt and varying points of view of Jewish life as interpreted by Seinfeld, All in the Family, comedian Sarah Silverman and others seem especially relevant.

In the Contemporary Issues Forum, you can weigh in with your take on various hot-button questions, such as, “Should religion play a role in American politics?,” by sharing your views on Post It-style notes, which are then scanned and aired on screens.

Finally, “It’s Your Story” offers the opportunity to film a short vignette about your ancestors, family traditions and other related topics; these screen on a loop and then are archived.

It’s your chance to add your own chapter to the American story.

Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists spirited these riches — bronzes, ceramics, jades, paintings, calligraphy, rare books — away from the Communists in 1948, shipping them to Taiwan for “temporary” storage that turned permanent in 1965, when the museum opened. Expanded many times, it occupies a dramatic terraced hillside overlooking the city.

On my recent visit, the NPM was overflowing with families, school tours, and tourists scurrying between galleries. As with most modern museums, the collections are divided into permanent and special exhibitions, spread out in this case over three floors. The layout, based on both chronology and theme, can be confusing, especially to those unfamiliar with Chinese art, but an orientation gallery and English-language tours help structure one’s voyage through the thousands of pieces on display.

I got the hang of it through an overview tour, then returned a few days later to revisit the best works. If I couldn’t find them at first, no problem. I simply sought out the densest and most agitated crowds, invariably to be found pressed against the showcases with the most sublime artifacts. Within one such mini-maelstrom glowed my favorite (and the NPM’s most popular)  —the cabbage.

Yes, cabbage, or as the museum catalog lists it, the “Jadeite Cabbage with Insects.” A product of the Qing Dynasty (1655-1911), this exquisite hunk of bok choy — cut from one piece of varied-color stone — was a dowry gift, the vegetable’s white stalk symbolizing the bride’s purity. A locust and a katydid that have alighted on its bright green leaves represent fertility. Originally residing in a palace of the Forbidden City in Beijing, the cabbage is but one sample at the NPM of China’s lapidary genius. Another jade delight, also a single stone, depicts a boy dancing with a bear, and I marveled at pieces of ivory similarly transformed — into a pagoda, a set of nested boxes, or a sphere encapsulating layer upon layer of carved balls.

There is much more to see at the museum, of course, some 4,000 items out of holdings that total nearly 680,000. These include world-class collections of Ming Dynasty porcelain and of bronzes that show off China’s millennia-long mastery of that metal. A stunning bronze Buddha, dating to 1782 and elaborately gilded, is a relatively recent example. The museum also excels in paintings, one group of which held my gaze for its depiction of forested marble mountains that I had beheld but a few days earlier on a trip to the spectacular Taroko Gorge National Park, on Taiwan’s Pacific coast.

photos courtesy of NPM

Alas, time ran out before I could tarry at the rare books, calligraphy, or what the museum calls curios — from a filigreed copper cloisonne box with lotus motifs and a carved olive-stone boat to a zither with jade tuning pegs and the almost too-realistic “Meat-shaped Stone,” a hunk of fatty pork hewn of banded jasper. After the cabbage, this is the NPM’s second-most popular attraction.

Aside from the size and quality of this artistic heritage, what came through for me here is the sheer intensity of Chinese art — stemming in part from my unfamiliarity with it — as well as its long historical trajectory. (The earliest works at the NPM date back 8,000 years.) The museum’s collections illustrate, as art usually does, the historical peaks and valleys of the country creating it. When that country is China, so much on our minds these days, what could be more fascinating?

A woman pleads with journalists to tell the story of Hurricane Katrina; photo by Brett Dukes

The first time I set foot inside Washington, D.C.’s, Newseum, I was hooked –– as a news junkie, this was like a history book come to life.

From the sinking of the Titanic to John F. Kennedy’s assassination to Unabomber Ted Kaczynski  –– whose creepy 10-by-12 foot cabin is on display –– the Newseum strives to offer an impartial view of how major events in U.S. and world history have been covered and the often-tough choices that go along with reporting them.

The museum’s multimedia trove of films, video clips and artifacts resonated with me on a professional level –– I started my writing career as a local newspaper reporter –– and a personal one: Included in the permanent collection is an email written on the day of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by my brother, Jim, who is a Pulitzer Prize-winning news executive at The Wall Street Journal.

But the Newseum, during a recent “girls’” road trip to the nation’s capital, also spoke to my non-journalist friends.

Pulitzer Prize-winning images; photo by Sam Kittner

Like me, they were drawn to the seven-story facility’s nearly 30 galleries and theaters, which can easily keep you occupied for the bulk of a day.

The Newseum, which is run by the nonprofit Freedom Forum, charges admission, but tickets are good for two consecutive days, in case you want to break up your visit.

If you’re on a tight schedule, the information desk provides a brochure with a two-hour itinerary.

The highlights are too many to recount: The massive, permanent collection includes a gallery of instantly recognizable Pulitzer Prize-winning photos;  the bombed-out 1976 Datsun that belonged to Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bolles, who was ambushed while covering a story linked to the Mafia; a section of the Berlin Wall, and the World Trade Center’s broadcast transmitter, which is the centerpiece of the emotionally draining, but worthwhile 9/11 exhibit.

Other exhibits come and go, although “G-Men and Journalists” has had its stay extended more than two years past its original closing, due to the continuing fascination with headline-making crimes ranging from the Lindbergh baby kidnapping to Patty Hearst’s stint with the SLA.

Unabomber Ted Kaczynski's cabin; photo by James P. Blair

The relatively upbeat “Elvis! His Groundbreaking, Hip-Shaking, Newsmaking Story”  runs through Feb. 14, 2011, while the far more powerful (and rather grim) “Covering  Katrina” is slated to end on Sept. 5, 2011.

The latter, from pleading newspaper editorials to behind-the-scenes interviews with the journalists who were on the scene, proved an engrossing reminder of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

Like the holdings of the Newseum –– and the best newspaper reporting –– the Katrina presentation mines the emotions of this tragic story without sensationalizing it.

Mad magazine icon Alfred E. Neuman presides over the "Visionary Kid's Room."

The things that make us smile can range from the downright silly (the unmistakable honk of a whoopee cushion) to the seriously witty (black-and-white editorial-style cartoons by self-taught artist John Callahan) to the plain old nostalgic (the infectious melody of “The Monster Mash”).

These grin-worthy objects and creations are part of “What Makes Us Smile,” a new exhibition marking the 15th anniversary of the nontraditional American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.

The show, which runs through Sept. 4, 2011, features the input of a man who has made a living out of getting people to smile: Matt Groening of “The Simpsons” and “Life in Hell” comic strip fame served as a co-curator, along with Gary Panter, a designer known for his work on “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” and museum founder Rebecca Hoffberger.

Together, they have gathered a range of visual art and written and spoken humor that’s guaranteed to make your face light up and make you think about the uncertain line between laughter and tears.

The displays, which include pop-culture artifacts, research-driven “factoids,” video clips and original art, reveal that the basics of what amuses us haven’t changed much over the centuries.

In the “Toot Suite,” where an installation of two dozen whoopee cushions has been fashioned into a noisy perch, we learn that everyone from ancient Greek playwrights to Queen Elizabeth I to Shakespeare was tickled by passing gas. In his letters, Mozart regaled family and friends with tales of his bodily functions, and founding father Benjamin Franklin once penned a volume called “Fart Proud” that’s still in print.

Around the corner in the “Tears to Laughter” section, the smile gets its due as a coping mechanism used by Abraham Lincoln. The nation’s 16th president apparently insisted on cracking jokes after his young sons’ untimely deaths as a way of surviving the unspeakable losses.

Whoopee cushion bench completes "Toot Suite"; photos by Robert DiGiacomo

In keeping with the museum’s focus on untrained and self-taught artists, the work of lesser-known creators and performers forms the backbone of the exhibition.

“Holy Laughter” offers video of Muslim American comedians riffing to a mostly Muslim audience on their post-9/11 experiences dealing with a suspicious mainstream culture. A series of “unflattering portraits” by Reverend Aitor of the Misanthrope Specialty Co. offers comically ugly renditions of Groening, rocker Iggy Pop and comedian Steven Wright, among others.

For me, the collection of dark-humor panels by Callahan, a quadriplegic artist who died at age 59 just before the opening of the “Smile” exhibition, resonated strongly.

His cartoons mine his disability for laughs via panels such as one depicting two old-school cowboys in wheelchairs in a standoff, with the caption, “This town ain’t accessible enough for both of us.” But they also expertly skewer the larger world, with one showing Jesus on a cross with the caption “TGIF,” and another with two hospital entrances: One, labeled “Detox,” is for alcoholism. The other, “Metox,” is for narcissism.

In the “Visionary Kid’s Room,” a fanciful layout includes a beaded headboard by Patty Kuzbida featuring a portrait of Mad magazine icon Alfred E. Neuman paired with a Spy v. Spy lamp and a glitter-painted portrait of Elmo, Cookie Monster, Bert and Ernie, Big Bird and other “Sesame Street” favorites.

Baltimore’s best-known visionary, filmmaker John Waters, also contributes several pieces, including a portrait of the artist as a young boy replete with his future signature: a pencil-thin mustache.

Finally, you can leave behind your own smile by stopping at the museum’s third-floor digital photo booth.