Starry sights
A young visitor follows the Yellow Brick Road at one of the museum’s three Immersive Experiences, one of which focuses on Ozverse. TOM WILBY
Oz is just one of the magical places showcased in local museum
For owners Palina and Fred Trust, the Wizard of Oz Museum is a labor of love that connects the couple’s love for hospitality, technology and, of course, The Wizard of Oz. MARIA SONNENBERG
It sounds like the stuff of fantasy but one of the most iconic heroines in children’s literature is coexisting happily with a tormented master of Impressionism and a slightly air-headed genie, on the Cocoa Beach Causeway.
Bringing together the Wizard of Oz’s Dorothy, Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh and Jeannie, the eponymous star of the television classic I Dream of Jeannie, is the work of Palina and Fred Trust, who moved their Wizard of Oz Museum from Cape Canaveral to larger quarters this spring. The expansion gave them the space to add an exhibit on Jeannie, a hometown girl: the TV show, which ran from 1965 to 1970, was set in Cocoa Beach.
Maria Sonnenberg
Maria is a prolific writer and proofer for Space Coast Living and an adjunct professor at Florida Institute of Technology’s Nathan M. Bisk College of Business. When not writing, teaching or traveling, she can be found waging a one-woman war against her lawn and futilely attempting to maintain order among the chaos of a pack of extremely clueless wirehair dachshunds and an angst-driven basset hound.
