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The Tin Building down by the Seaport—formerly home to Jean-Georges Vongerichten's food market experiment, which shut down in February—is ready for its next iteration as the permanent home of the viral Balloon Museum.
Officially opening on July 15, the museum will debut "DAYDREAM: AIR BECOMES ART," an inaugural exhibition featuring large-scale immersive environments that visitors can walk through and become part of. The centerpiece of the show will be acclaimed artist Marina Abramović's Snowy/Windy/Spring on Planet Z, an installation made up of "a glowing white, extraterrestrial meadow of shoulder-high inflatable grass and swirling artificial snow," according to an official press release.
Abramović isn't the only big name on the bill. The collective show, which is curated by Valentino Catricalà, rounds up a roster of international artists, each one turning air, light and sound into something you can physically wander into. Turner Prize winner Martin Creed fills a transparent room with hundreds of blue balloons in Work No. 3883: Half the air in a given space, a deliberately disorienting tangle that "contains" exactly half the air in the room. In Karina Smigla-Bobinski's ADA, a helium-filled, charcoal-spiked sphere bobs freely around the gallery, scribbling marks across the walls, ceiling and floor as visitors bat it around. Thom Kubli's Black Hole Horizon, on the other hand, uses compressed air to turn sound into a slow drift of soap bubbles, and Valerio Berruti reimagines a carousel as a flock of larger-than-life fiberglass birds. (We predict this one is going to be all over your social media feeds.)
The Balloon Museum has quietly become a bit of a phenomenon. Conceived by Italian company Lux Entertainment, it debuted in Italy in 2021 and has since drawn more than eight million visitors across 23 cities—popping up at heavy hitters like the Grand Palais in Paris and Marina Bay Sands in Singapore—before landing its first permanent U.S. home right here in Lower Manhattan.
A few logistics to keep in mind: tickets for the opening exhibition go on sale on June 8, with adult admission starting at $40 (kids ages 4 to 12 start at $26, and there are family bundles if you're wrangling a crew). The museum will be open daily, until 10pm on weekends, with last entry two hours before closing, so you'll have time to actually take it all in. You'll find it at 96 South Street, and the team has promised more details on opening-week programming in the coming weeks.
Consider this your official sign to keep your head in the clouds.