Museum of 90s summers: 31 pre-internet, pre-AI pieces
Guided tour.
Welcome.
My name is Simon, and today I'll have the pleasure of showing you around.
Before we begin, a small warning: in this museum you won't find any great works of art. No Picassos. No Van Goghs. No interactive screens. Not even AI-powered audio guides.
Here we only keep everyday objects. Ordinary. Kitsch. But every one of them has an extraordinary talent: it can give you back an entire summer in less than a second.
THE TOUR IN 20 SECONDS
31 pieces from the summers of the 90s and early 2000s, back when the internet didn't fit in your pocket and AI didn't exist anywhere.
Spread across five galleries: the beach (the Nivea ball, the cooler, the sandy sandwich), the sounds (cicadas, the fan, the cartoon theme song), the textures (the white sun lounger, tight skin after the chlorine), extinct technology (Walkman, Tamagotchi, Game Boy, rolls of film) and the things you can't touch: heading home when the streetlights came on, falling asleep in the car and being bored.
If you'd kindly follow me.
The tour is about to begin.
MUSEUM MAP
Gallery I. Genre painting: the 90s beach
The works in this first gallery were painted directly onto memory. Don't try to analyze them too much. Just look at them.
- Nº 01
Swimming goggles with spit on the lenses
Artist unknown, but an ancient technique that worked surprisingly well.
- Nº 02
The giant Nivea beach ball
Probably the most-seen object on any European beach between 1990 and 2005.
- Nº 03
The cooler full of sandwiches and watermelon
Oil on plastic (and plenty of grease). Takes two adults to carry it twenty meters across the sand.
- Nº 04
Prune fingers
Limited series. Only appears after three straight hours in the pool.
- Nº 05
The swimsuit tan line
Ephemeral installation. On display in July and August only.
- Nº 06
The sandwich with sand in it
Critics remain divided on whether the sand was part of the recipe.
- Nº 07
The ice pop that cost pocket change
Ephemeral by nature. Estimated duration of happiness: 30 seconds of licking before the heat won.
- Nº 08
The Band-Aid on your knee
Recurring work. No childhood ever managed to display just one.
Gallery II. Audiovisuals: the sounds of summer
Please keep quiet. If you hear any of these sounds, don't be alarmed. It's just nostalgia doing its thing.
- Nº 09
Cicadas at four in the afternoon
- Nº 10
The buzz of the bug zapper right before the “zap!”
- Nº 11
The fan going “click… click… click…” on every turn
- Nº 12
The “are we there yet?” with two hours of highway still to go
- Nº 13
The cartoon theme song
Official time to get out of the pool.
- Nº 14
The first seconds of The Simpsons
The most accurate clock of the summer.
Gallery III. Sculpture and textures
No touching in this gallery. Although we all know exactly how every piece feels.
- Nº 15
The rough plastic of the white sun lounger
- Nº 16
The scratchy towel on day three at the beach
- Nº 17
Tight skin after the chlorine
- Nº 18
The blue tin of cream that never closed properly
- Nº 19
Flip-flops sticking to the pool deck
- Nº 20
The strap of your swim cap (or goggles) ripping out three hairs at once
- Nº 21
The car seat scorching hot after a morning in the sun
Gallery IV. Extinct technology: Walkman, Tamagotchi and Game Boy
Visitors under thirty tend to think this gallery is science fiction.
- Nº 22
The pencil for rewinding cassettes
- Nº 23
The tape-eating Walkman
- Nº 24
The Tamagotchi that died on vacation
- Nº 25
The Game Boy tilted forty-five degrees
To find the one angle where you could actually see the screen.
- Nº 26
The roll of film
Twenty-four chances not to blink.
Gallery V. Intangible heritage
These pieces need no label. We all know exactly where we were when they happened.
- Nº 27
Going topless at the beach
These days, the one sunbathing topless is probably you.
- Nº 28
Heading home when the streetlights came on
- Nº 29
Falling asleep in the car and waking up with no idea what town you were in
- Nº 30
Melon after dinner
- Nº 31
Being bored
The hardest piece to explain to younger generations.
The museum shop
And that concludes our tour. Feel free to stop by the museum shop. We don't sell fridge magnets. Or T-shirts. Or mugs. Just one parting thought, for a happy ending:
None of these pieces ‘deserves a museum’… and yet they all hold on to something that's very hard to find these days: the power to make a summer feel endless.
Maybe it's not those objects we miss. Not even those summers.
Maybe what we miss is living in a time when you didn't have to pull out your phone for something to be worth it.
To feel you were exactly where you wanted to be.
P.S.: if reading this made you smell after-sun or feel sand between your toes, the tour was worth it. And if you want an after-sun that smells like melon, summer and fresh air, soothes your skin after the sun and helps your tan last longer, try our summer star: Melonizer.
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Keep reading
- Does after-sun take away your tan? The after-sun myths, one by one.
- Melons, watermelons and other summertime pleasures.
- 15 ideas for the perfect summer fling.