The Balloon Museum Serves as a Reminder About the Power of Play

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a 32-foot flying maze?

The Rome-founded Balloon Museum and its latest exhibition, "Let's Fly," have floated over to Miami, and you might come away pleasantly impressed.

If unfamiliar with the world's first and only inflatable art museum, you may be quick to think, Oh, God! Another overpriced selfie museum? I don't blame you. Featured are 21 larger-than-life installations by artists worldwide that prove very Instagram-worthy and are sure to garner likes — and envy — from followers. But the exhibition's aesthetic value is a scratch on the surface of what it really offers: the importance of play at any and every age.

Staged at the Mana Wynwood Convention Center, "Let's Fly" is a journey through a sensory wonderland that opens with AI Dataportal of Miami by Turkish artist Ouchhh, a tunnel of LED swirling patterns composed of millions of pieces of data from the 305's digital environment. Paired with hypnotic ambient sounds, the tunnel induces a trancelike effect that prepares you to transition into the inspired spaces of "Let's Fly."

Visitors are spat out into a maze of rooms inhabited by anthropomorphic giants, the likes of Spiritus Sonata, elephant-like beings trapped in large orbs, and Lava Lamp, a blown-up, serpentine reference to the 1960s toy. Given the exhibition's summer debut and kid-friendly hours of operation — the museum is open as early as 10 a.m. on weekends — expect to see youngsters launching themselves into the museum's bouncy surfaces. "Let's Fly" just begets that kind of response, regardless of age. It's an oversized playground that, yes, draws you in with its beauty and artistic value but also calls out the inner toddler in us all to squish, caress, and grip everything it has to offer.
"The Balloon Museum offers this interactive moment to break the usual barriers that are in regular museums between the art and the audience," shares Emma Hamilton, who works in artistic development for the museum's curatorial team. "We've been conditioned to just view art and appreciate it from a distance, so being able to step over that line and into the world created by the artist awakens in people a real joy."

Hamilton explains that the heart of the Balloon Museum's emphasis on interactive experiences is the reward of accessibility. Unlike the stuffy white pedestals of traditional museums, "Let's Fly" democratizes art appreciation and art making across the various age groups it engages with, from tots to grandparents.

"Anytime people feel the opportunity to interact with art, put their own energy into it, and have that reflected back in some way, creates such a wonderful relationship with a piece," she adds. "We hope that everyone from 6 to 86 years old can come into the museum and take away something different each time they visit."

The exhibition's midpoint shifts from largely tactile-oriented works to an immersive sensory experience. Visitors are ushered into an echoing white room with ADA, a helium-filled sphere dotted with graphite spikes. It's one of the show's more popular works, named after 19th-century mathematician Ada Lovelace, who created the world's first true computer program. Like a computer, ADA processes the data from visitors' movements and interprets the code into scribbles displayed on the room's white walls, which is, in essence, art that creates art. Pretty meta for a balloon, I know.
After craning your neck in awe at the endless mini-yous in BB's mirrored paradise, the gentle rainfall of vapor-filled bubbles in A Quiet Storm follows the exhibition's claim to fame, a giant ball pit pool popularized in season three of Netflix's Emily In Paris. Titled Hyperstellar, the pit is mirrored by a ceiling packed with monochrome balloons and a 360 screen that wraps around its entirety. A performance of transcendent EDM beats, strobe lights, and macroscopic visuals leads viewers to contemplate the immensity of the cosmos without having to shoot off into outer space.

That's cool and all, but is the museum really the perfect first date Emily in Paris makes it out to be? I think so. With its dim, atmospheric lighting and opportunities for playful touch, it's downright swoon-worthy.

Thinking of bringing the family instead? The museum is an entertaining, air-conditioned refuge for restless kids on summer break and the perfect family photo op to update your social media feeds. Whoever you bring, expect to leave floating on air.

"Let's Fly" at the Balloon Museum. On view through October 6, at the Mana Wynwood Convention Center, 318 NW 23rd St., Miami; 305-573-0371; balloonmuseum.world. Tickets cost $29 to $39. Monday through Thursday 1 to 8 p.m., Friday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Saturday through Sunday 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.