Tap Into Your Inner Child at the Balloon Museum (Real Kids Welcome, Too)
September 2, 2026
The Balloon Museum, now open at the Tin Building (96 South St.) in the Seaport, looks like the kind of place New Yorkers are by now very familiar with: a collection of interactive and immersive installations, organized around a loose theme, seemingly engineered for Instagram. Having never been to any of the exhibits like this in the city, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Imagine my surprise when I found something that is in short supply these days: a sense of childlike wonder and delight that I previously assumed was lost.
Balloon Museum has many pop-ups across the United States as well as Europe, with different iterations on the same theme — the possibilities of air as a material in contemporary art — in different locations. The New York iteration is the organization’s first permanent location, and the theme for the site’s opening is “Daydream — Air Becomes Art.” Featuring the work of contemporary artists, including new work by Marina Abramović, the museum is a really pleasant way to spend an afternoon.
Unsurprisingly, the Balloon Museum is popular with children, judging from the number of little ones I saw during my visit on a sticky Monday afternoon. But even though the space is decidedly kid-friendly, it’s not just for the youths. All the tots I saw on my visit appeared to be having a great time, but the folks having the most fun were Twanna James and Marisa Louis, two grown-up best friends celebrating their birthdays by indulging their own inner children. I encountered the pair in an installation called “Into the Cloud,” which was, aptly, a room meant to evoke a cloud, with white balloons on every vertical surface and a floor that was essentially a bouncy castle. The easiest way to navigate this room was to jump from one cloud to another, but staying upright in this room is a feat best left to the young.
James, Louis and I chatted while little ones bounced around us. The duo came across the Balloon Museum on social media and bought tickets without doing any research about what to expect. “That’s part of the fun,” they told me. After we talked for a few minutes, I army-crawled my way to the next exhibit, “The Forest of Endless Circle,” a maze made of inflatable fabric tubes, tucked into a hall of mirrors. As I wandered through, I heard James’s and Louis’s laughter, filled with sheer delight, as they entered the space. By all accounts, they were having an absolute blast.
There’s an interactive element in every installation. In “Ada,” you can bounce a giant helium-filled beach ball studded with spikes made of graphite around an all-white room, creating art on the surfaces it touches. There’s also a carousel, where you can sit on one of 18 sparrows and enjoy a ride. Another space, “Our Breath, Her Joy,” literally breathes around you, with walls draped in a metallic silver fabric that expands and contracts alongside a giant disco ball in the center of the room that melts and reforms. And one of the exhibit’s biggest draws is Marina Abramović’s “Snowy/Windy/Spring on the Planet Z,” one of the most immersive experiences in the building. Locked into headphones playing an idiosyncratic soundtrack, I wandered through a winding path surrounded on all sides by what looked (and almost felt) like giant blades of grass. Snow (okay, paper confetti) wafted through the air at varying intervals. The experience of walking through it was meditative.
There are two installations best viewed on your back. The first, Boris Acket’s “There, Where I Am Absent” features a single mechanical wing draped in sheer fabric, suspended from a mirrored ceiling. To properly view this work, you can lie down in the cushioned conversation pit and take a moment for yourself. The second should be experienced without any expectations, so I won’t spoil it here. That’s a helpful way to approach a visit to the Balloon Museum in general if you want to maximize your experience. Step inside for an hour or so, wind your way through the exhibits and emerge, blinking in the light of the gift shop, feeling better and maybe a little different than you did before you entered.
The Balloon Museum is open Monday – Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7 a.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekends. It is suitable for all ages and there’s free admission for children under the age of four. Tickets can be booked by time slot and day, starting at $40 for adults and $26 for children over the age of three, or you can purchase an open-ended ticket that’s good for six months, and starting at $77 for adults and $53 for children.
Megan C. Reynolds is a writer, editor, and author. She lives in Brooklyn.
main photo: courtesy Balloon Museum
