— By Andru Shively — 

One can best appreciate Europe’s cultural footprint by touring its iconic art museums: the Louvre, the Prado, the National Gallery.

But why ponder the ambiguities of the Mona Lisa’s watchful gaze, the moral warning of The Garden of Earthly Delights, or The Fighting Temeraire’s mortality in the face of industrial progress, when you can mull over all three at once in The Mysterious Greek Clown, a signature piece of the Archeoplastica collection.

Approaching its 5th anniversary this year, the Italy-based virtual museum and travelling exhibition documenting beached plastics waste was launched by Enzo Suma in late 2021 after initially collecting around 200 (reportedly now over 500) such objects from the coastline.

Related: Dissecting the man-made fossil record of the Plastic Age

Specialising in late-20th century artefacts, Archeoplastica aims to exhibit the persistency of plastic material, with dedicated collections investigating works from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, in particular. Each item is catalogued with date and location found, a brief description and virtual 3D model, along with efforts at product identification.

Visitor highlights include: the Hunchback of the 1960s, an Italy ’90 World Cup Ball, the Beached Bears in Puglia, and our personal favourite, the Gallery of Horrors.