The Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch, An Online Place for aKitschionados

The Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch (AWMoK) is an online community place where lovers of Kitsch, affectionately named aKitschionados, come together to share their “own prized Kitsch”. Curator of this online museum, Allee Willis, was a very early adopter of the internet and created one of the earliest social media outlets, willisville, partnered with award-winning creative visualist Prudence Fenton. Combining her own extensive real-life collections with a social media outlet, she created AWMoK to bring together other like-minded folks and to create the world’s largest documented collection of kitsch. Kitsch lovers can register to become part of the aKitschionado community at AWMoK and begin showing off treasured artifacts.

Today marks the anniversary that the Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch opened two years ago, not coincidentally on September 21, 2009. One of the many hit songs by Allee, September, for funk band Earth, Wind and Fire starts “Do you remember…the 21st night of September?”.

Amazingly accomplished, Allee is “a Grammy winning songwriter (September, Boogie Wonderland, Neutron Dance, What Have I Done To Deserve This, the Friends theme), a Grammy, Tony and Emmy nominated composer (The Color Purple musical), and award winning artist, graphic designer, set designer, interactive multimedia artist”. She has also addressed Congress on copyright laws, spoken at Harvard University, is known for hosting amazing theme parties, discovered the musical group The Del Rubio Triplets (plus so much more) and is connected to nearly every pop culture celebrity in existence.

A big fan of kitsch myself, I was introduced to AWMoK and Allee herself, earlier this year when I hosted a “For the Love of Kitsch” party at my home and I’ve since become active in the aKitschionado community. A month ago, I was invited to visit Allee’s home, Willis Wonderland, for a pre-Fluff Festival aKitschionado gathering. I not only got to see her absolutely incredible real-life kitschy collections but I also got to make a Fluffernutter cake in her kitchen (with some help from Cherpumple inventor, Charles Phoenix). I also got to see Allee’s own beautiful Celebrity JunkDrawers mosaic portrait by Jason Mecier up close.

On October 18, 2011, Allee will take the stage for the first time since 1974 in a live show, Allee Willis’ Soup to Nuts Party Mix, at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood, California starting at 7 PM. The evening promises songs, stories, party games, prizes and junk food.

photos by Jennie Warren and Dina