Kitsch museum to open online

ByABC News
September 10, 2009, 7:29 PM

— -- One of the entries on L.A. resident Allee Willis' résumé: co-writer of the I'll Be There for You theme song from TV's Friends.

Dearer to her heart: her vast collection of pop-culture items ranging from a Michael Jackson beverage cooler, to toilet radios (lift the lid and they play), to a ceramic half cup with the inscription: "You asked for a half-cup of coffee."

Monday, the Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch is due to open online at awmok.com. It'll have photos of her extensive collection and solicit visitor contributions for its "kitschenette" wing. "I've been collecting kitsch since 1969," says Willis, 61, who wants to share her passion and hopes to encourage interaction of kitsch collectors on the museum website.

On a more serious note, Washington's Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History opens "Since Darwin: The Evolution of Evolution" on Saturday, tied to the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of his On the Origin of Species.

A first edition of that publication is one of the exhibits at another new Darwin exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution Libraries.