Umbrella Cover Museum
Umbrella Cover Museum
Getting into the Guinness Book of World Records is no easy task when the world record you’re trying to set isn’t even one of their categories. But, after five years of persistence, accordion player Nancy 3. Hoffman not only managed to get the world’s leading authority on record-breaking achievements to create a new category, but the museum she founded set a record for it.
For reasons unknown to her, in the early 1990s, Hoffman developed a fascination with umbrella covers bereft of their umbrellas after she came across a bunch of strays in her home. She began asking people to donate covers and by 1996 had enough – 35 – to open the Umbrella Cover Museum in her kitchen on Peaks Island.
By the time her collection of umbrella sleeves set the world record in 2012, the museum had moved out of her house to a commercial building on the island and had grown to 730 covers. Today, the museum has over 2,000 umbrella covers from more than 70 countries and often makes lists of quirky things to do. Visitors to the museum, which is only accessible by boat, get a tour from Hoffman, who frequently whips out her accordion to lead them in the museum’s theme song, “Let a Smile be Your Umbrella.”
