“Even if it breaks even, I’m good with that” said Mr. Rubinoff, who manages his shops along with his wife, Marina.

The project is part promotion and part penchant for barbering history, he said.

“I don’t even have a high school degree, but I’m a fourth-generation barber who spent his whole life in barbershops,” said Mr. Rubinoff, who runs a shop one block north of the museum location and lives nearby.

His apartment has become a staging area for the museum pieces, including a 1901 Koken barber chair and antique poles of various sizes and styles. His collection also features old, heavy blow dryers and shaving cream dispensers.

Mr. Rubinoff said he grew up in Fergana, a city in Uzbekistan, and spent his childhood in his father’s barber shop — “the first wash and cut shop in Uzbekistan.”

Mr. Rubinoff was 14 when his family moved to the United States and settled among the many other Uzbek immigrants in and around Forest Hills, Queens.

Mr. Rubinoff said he began cutting hair in his father’s shop in Astoria and dropped out of Forest Hills High School to work full time.