The Gallery Selfie Museum

Sometimes I Hate My Selfie
The Gallery Selfie Museum, Ledyard (Location)
April 2025

Connecticut museum visit #544.

I visited this museum twice in the same week.

I didn’t actually visit this museum, nor will I.

Huh?

For one, this isn’t a museum by anyone’s definition, though that hasn’t stopped me before when people put the word museum in the name of their… thing.

But I’m not going to pay $40 to go look at a bunch of chintzy booths in a mall in which people are supposed to take pictures of themselves for their social media. How is that a museum? In any sense of the word?

I am not the market for this. I generally do not take “selfies,” nor do I use social media in this way. Nor do I like paying $40 for what is, to my curmudgeonly old man eyes, not worth a tenth of that. But that’s me! These so-called “selfie museums” exist all over the county now, and there is, in fact, another one in Hartford.

For now anyway. I can’t imagine these are a sustainable long-term business, but I credit the owners for taking the leap and hopefully this works for them. In the outlet mall, this collection of photo booths is right next to a pickleball court. We live in interesting times.

I was first here with my son and a couple friends to go go-karting, which my son loves. We ate lunch and then walked the mile across the Foxwoods complex to find the (rather terrible) arcade. I asked Calvin to take a picture of me in front of the Selfie Museum, and his picture was terrible. Perhaps I should have taken a selfie. At least he did get this picture of me:

A few days later, my wife Hoang and I were back to see comedian Sheng Wang. I stupidly parked in a place that required us walking through the stupid mall again. At least this allowed for another shot at a “better” picture of me (in the white shirt, at bottom) at the Gallery Selfie Museum! Yay!

So why does this place, and many others like it around the country, call itself a museum? I have no idea. It’s a for-profit, silly and fun photo studio business. Now, I know that in the previous 543 museums in the fine state of Connecticut that I’ve visited, there are many that aren’t traditionally museums. So I can’t be upset about this place for that.

And I’m sure it’s fun for its intended audience. The “museum” offers somewhere between 23 and “over 30” themed photo opportunities, including a 360 video experience, with seasonal booth rotations. They give you a ring light to use. The owner has been featured on local news and called the phone booth backdrop “infamous.” I don’t know what makes it infamous.

Nor do I know why “the tub with the money in it” is big on TikTok, but I know that things that are “big on TikTok” are not big on TikTok a month later. I suppose the ability to change backgrounds is key to the success of this venture.

There you have it. A museum that’s not a museum that I did not visit because no way am I spending forty bucks for something that would just make me angry. And hey, if you’re into this, go for it! The owner seems very nice in those news clips I watched and grabbed a few stills from for this page.

The Gallery Selfie Museum
CTMQ’s Museum Visits