Museum of Feelings

Because I'm a sucker for both long lines and over-hyped art installations, I spent my day off at the pop-up Museum of Feelings. Ok, I guess I didn't exactly spend my entire day - more like just under four hours, including the time it took me to get all the way down to Battery Park and back, and the majority of those hours were spent in transit and in line. I was emotionally prepared to wait for quite some time before getting in because a.) the "museum" is free to the public for the entirety of it's brief existence and b.) New Yorkers love lines, (see: Rain Room). Surprisingly however, I made it to the front of the line in a mere 45 minutes. You may think I'm being sarcastic here but I'm not - when I arrived 18 minutes after the museum opened, the line had already snaked back on itself, so I was legitimately impressed when I got inside in under an hour. This probably speaks volumes about what living in this city does to one's levels of expectation, but that's a post for another day.

The pop-up itself was short on feelings and high on "experience" amidst a virtually non-existent "museum." I personally expect to learn something while visiting a museum, and I can honestly say I gained no knowledge of feelings, emotions, human interaction, or the nature of human existence. That being said, it was a free event, and you get what you pay for. Each room of the museum roughly corresponded with an emotion and the rooms were designed to evoke and arouse those specific feelings in each visitor - or something. Honestly though, it was all just a bunch of (literal) scented smoke and mirrors that was kind of cool for about five minutes but then turned annoying when, at the end of the tour, I realized the whole thing was sponsored by Glade and that I was being given the opportunity to purchase the unique scents I'd just inhaled in both candle and plug-in forms.

But again, it was free and I didn't have much else going on (#gottagetahobby), and I did manage to get a couple of cool pictures. So really, I can't complain ;)

If you go: The Museum of Feelings is located at 230 Vessey St. in New York City, and opens daily at 11am through December 15, 2015. Go if you're in the area, but don't schedule your day around it!