museum piece

noun

1. something suitable for keeping and exhibiting in a museum.
2. something very old-fashioned or decrepit:

   That car he drives is a museum piece.

museum piece

noun

1. an object of sufficient age or interest to be kept in a museum
2. informal.
   a person or thing regarded as antiquated or decrepit

Word History and Origins

Origin of museum piece¹

First recorded in 1900–05

Idioms and Phrases

An elderly or old-fashioned item or person, as in When are you going to sell that museum piece of a car? or Aunt Jane comes from another era—she's a real museum piece . This expression originated about 1900 for an article valuable enough for museum display but began to be used disparagingly from about 1915.

Example Sentences

A good opera “speaks to something specific about the human condition, and isn’t just some dull, remote, inscrutable museum piece,” he told Salon.

From Salon

Sherman also said that "we're not cooking like it's 1491. We're not a museum piece of something like that. We're trying to evolve the food into the future, using as much of the knowledge from our ancestors that we can understand and just applying it to the modern world."

From Salon

Today this chip is a 'museum piece', but in the 70s it was the driver of the first Apple, Commodore and Nintendo computers.

From Science Daily

“Anderson’s sources — and Anderson — argued that it was really a museum piece, a relic,” Bennett said.

From Seattle Times

“He is not merely a museum piece, but a man,” one archaeologist told The Age in 1956.

From National Geographic