NEW YORK: Billed as where art meets technology, New York’s newest museum promises to reinvent the format with an “immersive and sensory” experience. Mercer Labs Museum of Art and Technology features the works of Roy Nachum, a painter, sculptor, and sound and lighting designer.
Open since January in Manhattan’s financial district, Nachum and investor Michael Cayre told AFP they hoped to turn a profit on the $35 million they spent on the space, a former mall that has its formal grand opening on March 28.
Even for a city as expensive as the financial capital of the US, overflowing with cultural and entertainment attractions, the prices are steep. Adults pay $52, while seniors and young people pay $46. But entrepreneur and property developer Cayre insists it represents value for an hour of the “ultimate experience”.
Mercer Labs is perfectly positioned for Instagram and TikTok catnip, as are many New York sites that have opened in recent years, including panoramic views from Vanderbilt Tower’s “Summit One” as well as One World Trade Center and The Edge skyscrapers.
Nachum has been based in New York for 20 years and is perhaps best known for designing the art for megastar Rihanna’s 2015 album “Anti.” The cover features a blindfolded child wearing a golden crown in Braille, a tribute to Nachum’s visually impaired grandmother.
Also read: Gunfire booms in Haiti as politicians seek to form interim gov’t
Mercer says the collection of installations “redefines the museum experience through 15 interactive exhibition spaces, unique listening experiences, and immersive installations where the relationship between art and technology is questioned.” As established museums struggle to attract younger audiences and stay relevant, Nachum said Mercer has taken a new approach. “In every museum, every gallery you have, you can’t touch the work.
We want people here to touch the work, to interact with the work,” he told AFP. Visitors are invited into a darkened room where Nachum’s videos, photographs and holograms are projected onto the walls, floor and ceiling, lending the space a nightclub atmosphere, complete with a smoke machine and DJ beats.
In the “dragon’s lair”, 500,000 LED lamps flash in time to convince visitors that they are in the presence of the mythical creatures. “(Technology is) another pen, it’s a different brush, but we use it and we tried to break the limits and we tried to create new technologies, we mix so many different technologies at the same time to try to create something new,” Nachum said.
