THE MERMAID MUSEUM The ocean’s notorious femme fatale is the muse
by laren stover
B
y 18 she had two mermaid tattoos. Alyssa Maloof, a photographer and founder of The Mermaid Museum says, “I didn’t have a collection, or think about them all the time, but a mermaid tattoo is a pretty serious sign that I was getting the siren’s call through the ether.” Alyssa’s photo studio, the airy second floor of a former Odd Fellows building in Berlin, Maryland, was largely dormant in 2020. So when visions of mermaids began to swim in her head, she came up with the idea to install a mermaid museum in the space. What clinched the deal was not a vision of a beguiling sea maiden with sea-green eyes and seaweed-laced hair. What glamoured her was not even a selkie. “As I was musing about making the museum, I was early to a wedding I was shooting in Philadelphia so I walked into Anastacia’s, my favorite antiques shop back when I was an art student. It was always a dream to be able to buy a big thing from there. “‘Do you have anything mermaid oriented?’ I asked the owner and he said, ‘Oh, yeah, we have a little dish.’ Then he pointed to a glass case veiled in dust and said warily, ‘We also have that.’”
