This Miami museum takes visitors though an Instagram-ready funhouse

Art gallery, science exhibition and 21st century funhouse, Paradox Museum Miami takes guests on a tour through optical illusions and other enigmas geared for the age of Instagram.

The 11,000 square-foot (1,000 square-meter) museum, housed in Miami’s trendy Wynwood arts and entertainment district, features more than 70 exhibits that challenge the imagination, executive director Samantha Impellizeri said.

“It ebbs and flows between periods of highly tactile and interactive exhibit pieces and fully immersive photo opportunities where you yourself become the paradox and walk away with some really fun and unique social media content,” Impellizeri said.

Paradox Museum has more than a dozen locations throughout North America, Europe and Asia. The Miami location, which opened in 2022, was the first in North America, followed by Las Vegas and New Jersey.

“Each paradox is uniquely tied to its community,” Impellizeri said. “So as you walk throughout the experience, you’ll notice different themes and art installations that directly reflect not only Miami but the Wynwood community specifically.”

Many of the exhibits at Paradox Museum harken back to old carnival funhouses, like the mirror maze, the spinning tunnel and the upside-down room. The difference is that Paradox Museum explains the math and science behind each illusion.

“We’re a top field trip destination for pre-K all the way up through college students,” Impellizeri said. “We have a full curriculum of educational activities to do before, during and after the visit to expand upon that educational scope.”

Like any museum, Paradox Museum plans to update its exhibits to keep visitors coming back.

“We’re not going to be the same space in a year to three years from now,” Impellizeri said. “We’ll be engaging with new technology and layering additional discoveries on top of it.”

Paradox Museum Miami introduced a new Zero Gravity Room this past fall. Guests step into a giant, slowly moving vertical wheel designed to look like the interior of a space station after placing their camera phones on a spinning mount. The spinning camera is synced to the spinning wheel, so the video appears to show the guests walking up the wall and ceiling, like something out of “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Paradox Museum is part of a large trend of immersive art experiences opening all over the world this past decade. Examples include a company called Meow Wolf with several locations in the western United States, as well as an immersive Van Gogh exhibit that has been touring North America, Europe and Asia since 2017. Superblue Miami opened in 2021, featuring interactive and experiential art.

“Immersive experiences around the world are increasing in popularity and popping up more and more,” Impellizeri said. “And it’s exciting to see that this trend of interactive and immersive experiences taking off that allows guests to become part of the art, part of the installation itself.”

Visitors generally take 60 to 90 minutes to make through way through Paradox Museum. Tickets normally cost $26 for adults and teens and $20 for children.

Facundo Ildarraz, 17, and his family came to Miami from Argentina to catch a cruise and had a few days to check out the city. Ildarraz said his mom found Paradox Museum online, and it turned out to be a great chance to take fun photos with his family.

“I’ve been laughing since I went inside,” Ildarraz said. “It’s really amazing.”

Dennis Speigel, head of a consulting company called International Theme Park Services, Inc., said immersive experiences are a natural progression of location-based entertainment, like go-cart tracks, laser tag, paint ball, indoor skydiving, escape rooms and trampoline parks. They are smaller scale attractions that take visitors a few hours to go through, rather than an all-day activity like visiting an amusement park.

“It’s a lot of little things that we’ve had in the industry for years, heightened by our new technology, like augmented reality and virtual reality, to make the experience new and something people haven’t seen,” Speigel said. “It’s kind of an evolution, everything that’s old is new again.”

—David Fischer, Associated Press

View the full article