Brighton Museum and Art Gallery is just like my brain: full of unexpected nooks and crannies, a bit random, and not too big.

Don’t get the wrong idea, it's a hip little museum with a fun and eclectic collection. It's part of a lovely fantasy palace, the Royal Pavilion and the location can’t be beat - a hiccup from the Brighton seafront. The Royal Pavilion is a Rajasthan-inspired palace built when George-the-something was but a toddler and finished in 1805. Rajasthan in India, however, is bone-dry, with no ocean in sight. It's palaces are built for the hot dry weather. Seeing the Pavilion in the rain-soaked British seaside is just weird. Still, it’s a bright spot for the city.

On one side of the Pavilion is the old medieval town center with heaps of posh little shops and actually very good places to eat. The North Lanes on the other side is a mix of old pubs, arts and crafts stores, vegan this and that, coffee shops, and the wonderful organic food coop called Infinity. For Californians, it's like Berkeley, but cleaner and full of Europeans.

The museum’s main hall has one of those great high-vaulted ceilings and is full of cool retro-design furniture. Then, at the end of the hall, is a small dark gallery with random interactive world culture things, including a foosball table you can play. Around another corner, a chaotic and tightly wound display of the city of Brighton, starting off with "The Dirty Weekend." Back in the day, Londoner gents would come down to Brighton to have a poke with their mistresses or secretaries. If you came down alone, the city would supply the raw materials. 

Upstairs it gets truly strange, though. The first upstairs gallery is like an acid trip. The Performance exhibit is a spectacularly packed room of puppets, masks, and costumes worn for ceremonial dances from all over the world, with accompanying video displays. The lighting casts shadows everywhere and weird figures lean in to you from all sides. If you can control the impulse to flee, Sokari Douglas Camp’s Naked Big Fish from the Niger Delta and other pieces are wonderfully interesting and charismatic.

Then there's an Ice Age display, followed by designer fashion. Not the ancient gear of aristocrats or bishops, but a mix of cool 20^th century stuff like Alexander McQueen, Givenchy, and Issey Miyake. Painting and sculptures from different centuries and continents are hung all over the place and somehow help bind the whole museum experience together. All in all, a fantastic place to visit in Brighton.