Balloon Museum Opens in New York with Marina Abramović Among Highlights

The latest outpost of the Balloon Museum opened in New York on August 7 in the Tin Building at South Street Seaport. In addition to Abramović, artists in the inaugural exhibit, titled “DAYDREAM—Air Becomes Art,” include Martin Creed, Karina Smigla-Bobinski, Alex Schweder, Thom Kubli, Boris Acket, Hyperstudio, Rub Kandy, and others. Over 7 million visitors have previously enjoyed Balloom Museum exhibitions worldwide, but the NYC location is the first permanent one.

Rather than treating balloons as novelty objects, the artists use air to create volume, movement, drawing, architecture, and environments that change as people move through them. Marina Abramović’s Snowy/Windy/Spring on Planet Z is her first work to use air as a primary medium. In addition, Martin Creed’s Work No. 3883: Half the air in a given space fills part of a gallery with joyfully azure balloons, and Smigla-Bobinski’s ADA offers a giant floating sphere studded with charcoal that visitors push around the room, leaving marks across the walls as it moves. Kandy’s enormous googly-eyed GINJOS, meanwhile, have already started appearing outside the museum and around the Seaport.

“Balloon Museum was founded on the idea that air and inflatables could become a powerful contemporary language,” said Balloon Museum President and Lux Entertainment CEO Roberto Fantauzzi, continuing, “Establishing a permanent home in New York is an extraordinary milestone for our organization and a reflection of how far this vision has grown.”

1907’s Tin Building is an apt location to celebrate balloons. The corrugated-metal exterior structure belongs to a waterfront historically defined by ships, warehouses, commerce, seafood, and people physically moving goods through the city; “DAYDREAM” is full of works that inflate, float, move, and change.

The Balloon Museum is now open at the South Street Seaport in New York.