Cryptozoo museum will open in Portland

Back on Monday from a week of vacation, I found this piece of exciting news in my inbox: Noted cryptozoologist Loren Coleman will open the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland on Nov. 1.

Coleman reported the news on the Cryptomundo blog. "The three-year lease is signed, the fundraising can begin in earnest (and) your help is needed," he wrote.

The museum will be the first public cryptozoo museum in the world, according to Coleman, who lives in Portland and has been showing his collection of crypto stuff out of his home for many years. Cryptozoology is the study of hidden animals. Think Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster.

The museum will be at 661 Congress St., just down the street from the Portland Museum of Art, next to Joe's Smoke Shop.

In his posting, Coleman said an inspiration for the museum was the exhibition at Bates College in 2006, "Cryptozoology: Out of Time Place Scale," co-curated by Mark Bessire.

Bessire directed the Bates museum then, and now is director of the Portland Museum of Art.

"The mission of the museum is to share the many items I have collected during the last half a century, with tourists, teachers, researchers, scholars, colleagues, students, documentary filmmakers, news people and the general public," Coleman wrote.

The collection includes sculptures and paintings, artifacts, toys, models and movie props. The centerpiece of the collection is an 8-foot, 400-pound Crookson Bigfoot, created by Wisconsin artist Curtis Christensen.