Suzanne's Mom's Blog

Photo: Matt Stromberg/Hyperallergic.
Ford Edsel at the original Museum of Failure in 2018.

Years ago, my husband and I went to see a Harvard student performance of a rarely performed Cole Porter musical, Nymph Errant. The thing we remember most is that the director was outside handing out flyers disavowing his participation. Someone else had made decisions about the final production, and he wanted the audience to know he disagreed — violently!

I’m reminded of that incident by the current kerflufle over something called the Museum of Failure. The .com version, supposedly the original, is at war with a .net version and its recent exhibition.

Lily Janiak at the San Francisco Chroniclewrites, “Will the real Museum of Failure please stand up?

“Earlier this month, Time Out reported that a popup exhibition of some of history’s most spectacular bad ideas [would] tour next month, with a San Francisco stint at the space formerly occupied by Madame Tussauds in Fisherman’s Wharf.

“The website museumoffailure.net likewise teased the exhibition. But a different website called museumoffailure.com — which had the same logo and branding and much of the same content — made no mention of it.

“Turns out the discrepancy isn’t a marketing blunder. It’s an international copyright dispute.

“When the Chronicle contacted Samuel West, the proprietor of museumoffailure.com and the creator of the museum’s concept, he disavowed the San Francisco stop. 

“ ‘This is a surprise to me,’ he wrote via email. … He later claimed on a video call that it was ‘fraudulent.’

“David Perry, a spokesperson for SEE Global Entertainment Inc., which is producing the Fisherman’s Wharf event, rebutted West’s claims.

“ ‘SEE Global owns the international trademark for and all the assets in the Museum of Failure: period end stop,’ Perry wrote via email. ‘In years past, we have welcomed him to all iterations of the Museum of Failure as a valued cheerleader with all due credit given.’

“West, who’s based in Malaga, Spain, and has a Ph.D. in organizational psychology, studied play in the workplace, including how improv theater can improve a team’s creativity. He was interested in destigmatizing failure but thought, ‘It’s too interesting to be a TED Talk. I need a new form.’

“That new form, the Museum of Failure, premiered in 2017 in Sweden, where he was living at the time. A hit, it went on to tour to Taiwan, France, Canada and beyond. …

“For an item on the Fyre Festival, West made a replica of the real-life ‘Fyre Festival luxury lunch — a pathetic-looking cheese sandwich in a Styrofoam box — out of plastic. For a piece on Theranos, he made replicas of ‘little tiny vials’ of blood, putting them next to test tubes for scale. (The blood was ‘Halloween vampire blood,’ he said.)

“One of the museum’s fans was Martin Biallas, CEO of SEE Global Entertainment Inc., whose previous exhibition credits include the Disgusting Food Museum — which West also co-created. …

“In 2017, Biallas and West signed an agreement under California jurisdiction that granted SEE ‘exclusive license’ to the museum’s ‘assets, artifacts, memorabilia, content and exhibit and merchandising items and the descriptions thereof’ for a period of five years, with two options to renew. West could continue to stage his own popup exhibitions so long as they were either more than 200 miles or more than 12 months away from Biallas’. The agreement also ensured West would receive 20% of all gross revenues.

“But on Tuesday, Feb. 25 [this year], West told the Chronicle that not only has Biallas not renewed the license; Biallas hasn’t given him his 20%. …

“In 2023, West hired a lawyer to inform Biallas he was in breach of contract and demand payment. The letter goes on to note that Biallas successfully applied to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the word mark ‘Museum of Failure.’ Perry supplied the Chronicle with proof of trademark ownership.

“ ‘At the time of the application, your client knew that it did not own the rights to Museum of Failure,’ the letter states. 

“Biallas’ lawyer responded by alleging that West knew about the trademark application. The letter also asserts that because West had been embroiled in a prior Museum of Failure ownership dispute, with Niklas and Jenny Madsen of Swedish design company Superlab, West might not have legal standing. …

“Biallas has also been involved in other legal disputes about exhibition copyright. He was a plaintiff in a lawsuit alleging that two of his former employees stole imagery from his ‘Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel: The Exhibition’ and toured it in an exhibition called ‘Michelangelo: A Different View’ under the auspices of German company Exhibition 4 You. That lawsuit was settled in 2021. 

“In 2022, the Louvre sued Biallas’ SEE Global, alleging ‘misappropriation of the Louvre’s reputation and intellectual property through a venture called ‘ “Louvre Fantastique.” ‘ … That lawsuit was settled.

“Last year, SEE Global sued the patent attorney it had hired to secure Louvre permissions, alleging negligence. In a response and counterclaim, attorney David D’Zurilla and his firm Schwegman Lundberg & Woessner, P.A. wrote that they ‘were retained specifically to prosecute a trademark and they successfully obtained the trademark.’ That case will head to trial in July if a settlement isn’t reached.”

More at the San Francisco Chronicle via MSN, here. The art magazine Hyperallergic wrote a review of an exhibit by the .com version of the Museum of Failure, here. Sounds like there’s more than enough failure to go around.