The recent Museum of Ice Cream exhibit that hit the city with 30,000 tickets and sold out in a mere 5 days is a clear indication of the new heights that New York art is rising to. With a limited run that only spans until August 31st, the unique Ice Cream display has had people scrambling for passes – in fact, tickets on Craigslist have gone up to $100 from an original price of $18. This, however, is only one of many exhibits that are being crafted in such new and innovative ways, continuing to push traditional artistic boundaries. Por Homme has teamed up with Uzeeum to gather a collection of the weird, the wonderful and the immersive exhibits that have sprouted throughout the city. Uzeeum is both “the automatic first step for any person planning to visit a NYC museum and a favorite online destination for museum aficionados,” making it the perfect site for this avenue of exploration. Here are some New York art destinations for you to check out:
Arcade Classics: Video Games From The Collection
The Arcade Classics exhibition is the avid gamer’s dream. It features 38 classic video arcade games released between 1971 and 1993 and incorporates an interactive element by letting all museumgoers play with the machines. Computer Space is currently the oldest game on display, having been created in 1971. The genres of the games on view in the exhibition are diverse, including “early sports games (Atari Football, NBA Jam, Track & Field); fighting games (Karate Champ,Mortal Kombat); driving games (Pole Position, Out Run); puzzle and platformers (Donkey Kong,Frogger, Q*Bert); and a diverse array of “shooters,” many set in space (Asteroids,Galaxian,Defender, Space Invaders, Zaxxon), but also earthbound variations like Centipede.” Four game tokens are provided to all the exhibition viewers and, if that’s not enough, additional tokens are available for purchase.
Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35 Ave, Astoria, NY 11106
The Immersion Room
The Immersion Room is a unique interactive space that provides an unrivalled viewing of Cooper Hewitt’s collection of wallcoverings. It captures the essence of “a practical working laboratory” that founders Sarah and Eleanor Hewitt wanted to embody through the museum. Art is made immersive through the ability to project incredible wallpaper designs from the exhibition onto the walls from floor to ceiling. The works can be enjoyed in various ways: “you can even play designer by creating your own designs, or just stand back and watch as the wallpapers unfold across the room.” The experience is elevated with audio that complements the wallpapers, providing more information about the design or the designer. This digital, immersive experience is paving the way for Cooper Hewitt and guiding its transformation “into a design museum for the 21st century.”
Cooper Hewitt Museum, 2 E 91st St, New York, NY 10128
Splendor in the Grass: Kinesthetic Camping Ground
World renowed Studio Droog has spearheaded the creation of Splendor in the Grass, an immersive exhibition in the famous Museum of Sex that works to elevate all of the senses. Physical, visual and olfactory experiences are heightened in the camping ground setting, which is transformed into an adult playground that explores the complexities of sexuality. Museumgoers stand in the midst of an elaborate forest-like scenery with a moving sky, live park rangers and an intimate campfire. The sensual environment calls for an unreserved, unashamed investment in the experience, as it houses five interactive camping tents that “connect the visitor to phases of sexual stimulation and the thrill of arousal in an encounter that is both whimsical and titillating.”
Museum of Sex, 233 5th Ave, New York, NY 10016
Tony Oursler: Imponderable
Tony Oursler’s Imponderable is an immersive feature-length film, inspired by Oursler’s own collection of ephemera in relation to stage magic, spirit photography, pseudoscience, telekinesis, and other paranormal phenomena. “Drawing on these objects, Imponderable weaves together a social, spiritual, and empirical history of the virtual image that overlaps with the artist’s own family history.” This MOMA exhibition a unique form of modernism, seeking to intersect technology and occult manifestations from the last two centuries. This is not just a regular film but rather a full sensory experience as it is presented in 5-D, “utilizing a contemporary form of Pepper’s ghost—a 19th-century phantasmagoric device—and a range of sensory effects (scents, vibrations, etc.).”
Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), 11 W 53rd St, New York, NY 10019
Manus x Machina: Fashion In An Age Of Technology
Presented at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Costume Institute’s spring 2016 exhibition seeks to demonstrate “how fashion designers are reconciling the handmade and the machine-made in the creation of haute couture and avant-garde ready-to-wear.” Featuring more than 170 designs spanning from the 20th century to the modern day, this exhibition highlights the various milestones in the production of clothing, from the creation of the sewing machine to the development of larger factory machines, which led to mass production. The works of art explore “this ongoing dichotomy, in which hand [manus] and machine [machina] are presented as discordant tools in the creative process, and questions the relationship and distinction between haute couture and ready-to-wear.”
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 5th Ave, New York, NY 10028
The Morbid Anatomy Library
Founded in 2008, The Morbid Anatomy Library is a research library and collection that houses over thousands of books. The library located in Brooklyn is free of charge to researchers and features, “books, photographs, artworks, pieces of ephemera, and artifacts relating to medical museums, anatomical art, collectors and collecting, cabinets of curiosity, the history of medicine, death and society, natural history, arcane media, and curiosity and curiosities broadly considered.” The Morbid Anatomy Librarys currently has two Scholars in Residence. The first is Evan Michelson of Obscura Antiques and Oddities and the Science Channels Oddities and the second is writer and researcher Salvador Olguín whose area of expertise is death in Mexico.
The Morbid Anatomy Museum, 424-A 3rd Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11215
Dinosaurs Among Us
The Dinosaurs Among Us exhibition highlights the “transition from the familiar, charismatic dinosaurs that dominated the planet for around 170 million years into a new, small, airborne form: birds.” Based on an abundance of fossil records, it has become clear that the animals we call birds and the animals we call dinosaurs are actually quite similar; in fact, the “the boundary between the animals… is now practically obsolete. In this exciting exhibition, visitors will be able to learn more about the evolution of dinosaurs and how their story continues today.”
American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West & 79th St, New York, NY 10024
The great, unrivalled quality about art is that the possibilities are truly endless – these exhibits are a clear indication of that. If you’re looking for more creative destinations to explore throughout the city, head over to the Uzeeum website.
