The idea for the Museum came about soon after our found, Kurt, was gifted a working laser disc player from a friend and initially developed as a panel for conventions on the history of anime on home video formats. During the process of creating the usual anime convention panel slide show presentation and taking photos of items in his collection, the idea of trying to showcase items in person came about as a suggestion and the idea of having a full museum style display was born.
With the generous help of his regular convention panel co-hosts and family, Kurt debuted the Museum as a panel presentation. Bringing a few small tables, and having friends king enough to donate and loan items for the weekend, the Museum debuted as a panel at Animazement 2024 in Raleigh, NC. The very first presentation of the Museum as a 90 minute panel was pretty humble overall, but attracted a small but enthusiast crowd. The panel started with a presentation going over various home video formats and more for the first half, and then with a short break, all the equipment was turned on to showcase various formats in action.
Growing Pains
Later that summer, Otakon's AMV Theater was kind enough to host the panel and allowed use of the entirety of the front of the rooms big stage to setup the equipment, which had expanded some since the first show. However, with only one hour to try and run a condensed version of the panel and the time to get all the equipment turned on, this left a very small portion of time for the interactive part of the panel. Despite this setback, people did enjoy seeing what the Museum had to offer and so over the next year, plans to expand the Museum began in a variety of ways.
Embiggening The Museum
Throughout the rest of 2024 and the first half of 2025, Kurt's personal collection continued to grow, including obtaining some highly coveted rare video systems like RCA's Capacitance Electronic Disc system and JVC's Video High Density system; plus various releases on numerous formats, many unique or rare. Going forward, it was obvious that the Museum was going to have to be more than just a panel. It needed to be a full sized exhibit!
So at the following Animazement, in May of 2025, the Museum debuted as a large exhibit in a corner space of one of the exhibit hall rooms, giving the Museum a lot of needed breathing room to showcase even more items from the ever growing collection. We were also given an entire room at Otakon this year as well along with a panel to discuss the Museum as well. Going forward, having the Museum as a traveling exhibit over a convention weekend is the plan. The Museum will continue to evolve to make this event ever changing and engaging with attendees at events. We hope you too look forward to what the Museum will do in the future as much as we do.
Museum at Aniazement 2025. Photo by Kamo Negi
Museum at Aniazement 2025. Photo by Kamo Negi
Museum at Otakon 2025. Photo by the Museum
Museum at Otakon 2025. Photo by the Museum
More to come as we update this page.