Philadelphia is about to get a little more awe-inspiring: the Ministry of Awe (MoA) opens its doors tomorrow, March 14. Billed as “a new, ever-evolving immersive art experience,” MoA sits inside a historic 19th-century bank designed by Frank Furness in Old City.
The MoA website describes the transformed bank as a “surreal world where the only currency is the human spirit” and “each act of wonder yields infinite returns.” Instead of a traditional art museum, it’s billed as an “experience” — a word that increasingly seems to permeate the art world.
Harry Potter’s Ministry of Magic regulated magic. Perhaps, this space is meant to regulate awe?
“A moment of awe”
Entering the Ministry of Awe is indeed like entering into a “surreal world,” akin to going down Alice’s rabbit hole or landing over the rainbow.
The bank’s lobby is both familiar and foreign. Sure, there’s an Old City feel to the building with its high ceilings, crown molding and wood trims. There’s a vault in the back and desks with rotary phones and vintage typewriters.
But then, you realize that the typewriter is typing by itself. Oh, and look up. There’s a giant eyeball staring at you with a camera in its pupil. A chaise lounge, seemingly immune to gravity, sits on the wall. Another wall has a gigantic nose sticking out from it that can talk and will tell you what you smell like. (Someone next to me had a musk of “2007, a year for poor decisions.”) Inside the vault — which unfortunately had some technical issues during our preview — one of the drawers contained little baggies of human teeth.
The more we looked around, the more unusual details we discovered. And again, this was just the lobby.
“When people come in, we want them to know that they should just feel free to explore and wander,” said Meg Saligman, the “Ministrix of Awe” and major creative brain behind the space. “It’s okay if you don’t see everything. You could have a moment of awe that you’ve never had — just one moment. That could be enough.”
Exploring all six floors
MoA is an impressive feat. The building contains six floors jam packed with creative designs, creatures, interactive tech and hand-painted murals. Saligman brought together over 100 Philadelphia-based artists, performers, makers, engineers and designers to make it happen.
To honor the building’s history, themes surrounding banking, currency and transaction are the inspiration here.
“It was a bank for the manufacturers of the day,” said Nick Stuccio, MoA’s executive director. “Basket makers, sail makers — these are craftspeople, just like the artists that we’ve commissioned around this building.”
“Think of bank words,” Saligman said. “Trust, bonds, tender, security. These are very beautiful words. So maybe we can rethink how our financial systems work, or how our collaborations between large groups of people are formed, right? That’s what money is. A fictional thing doesn’t really exist. There’s no gold standard anymore.”
Each floor at the Ministry is like its own little mini world. We were in the museum for about three hours, but it felt like we had just scratched the surface. Seriously, this entire article could have focused on just one corner of one room.
“It’s a very individual thing,” Stuccio said. “I ask people, even like my kids and my wife are here, and they see it differently, and are drawn to different things… I noticed a detail I hadn’t seen before, and I loved it.”
The basement has some bottom-dwelling creatures. There is a giant bathroom with an anthropomorphic female pig taking a soak (not quite Miss Piggy vibes, but still fabulous) as well another creature called a “skin horse” (this one had more nightmare fuel vibes).
One of the top floors, “the heavens,” contains an interactive celestial mural projection on its vaulted ceiling. The sky changes from night to day with the spin of a metal wheel. Visitors can talk into a microphone and ask the mural to highlight certain images — like clouds, angels and eggs. (Yes, there are eggs in the heavens).
Saligman and crew worked with the Pig Iron Theatre Company to bring actors into the space.
A “high priestess” occupies the heavens, walking around in a white Sgt. Pepper trenchcoat and holding a glowing orb. Her voice is soft and soothing, and she says things like — “very chill, very glamorous, very springtime.”
Her actual name is Rose Loardo and her job is to “welcome you into this heavenly, celestial space — to add to the environment with movement and voice and energies, to transport you to a different vibe than the other floors.”
A mix of silly and serious
There’s a lot of silliness inside the Ministry of Awe. In the department of “forgery, fraud and counterfeiting,” portraits of famous fraudsters hang on the wall and guests are encouraged to forge signatures. A man dressed like a white-collar hamburglar runs it through an AI scan and lets you know how you did.
And then there’s artwork that would seamlessly fit into a modern art museum. Right next door to the hamburglar guy, is a splintered, cascading wood sculpture that wraps around a stairwell from artist Daniel Ostrov. The idea sprung from “insecurity” — financial insecurity after all is what inspires many famous fraudsters.
“The way the piece starts is it’s very ordered, and the wood is stacked evenly, but there’s these tendrils that are on the inside that are hidden,” Ostrov said of the artwork. “And then as it spirals up the staircase, they start to break loose and break free until you get to the top, and it’s absolute chaos. That’s the idea of the insecurity breaking out.”
Even the bathrooms and staircases in MoA are art spaces. One bathroom had a mini replica of a video store in it and the toilet says “thank you for your deposit” when you flush. Artist Dennis Haugh created a replica of Duchamp’s ‘Nude Descending a Staircase’ in one stairwell and is currently installing a forgery of Charles Willson Peale’s ‘Staircase Group’ in another —both of which currently hang at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Some other fun noticings:
- The very top floor is a spaceship that supposedly crash landed into the museum. Inside there’s a ghost hanging around that you can find with the help of an iPad.
- You are invited to touch, draw on and interact with various artworks in MoA. There are also easter eggs you are encouraged to find.
- There’s a floor with a holographic ballerina — just like one you would find in a jewelry box. She begins dancing to a classical tune and then slowly starts pixilating and breaking free to fast-paced electronic, rock vibes. It’s pretty fun.
- There’s a floor all about death with a casket on the ceiling. When you look into a mirror, your face appears in a portrait in another room with the words “in loving memory” around it.
- There are little oculi scattered throughout the building that you can peer into other spaces with.
- Look for images of a “bird lady” throughout the museum. It’s a motif of Saligman’s.
“I would baptize my kid in this place”
Right now, MoA is a kind of this cacophony of ideas and intrigue that you are invited to walk into and try to unknot. Artist Sam Cronick, who helped with some of the building’s AV elements, is excited about how everything is coming together.
“I would do everything here,” he said. “I would have my wedding here. I would baptize my kid in this place. I love everything about this — every nook, every cranny, there’s just so much to explore.”
There isn’t another museum in Philadelphia quite like what’s going on inside MoA. The art playground feeling and sense of whimsy make it feel a bit like the Please Touch Museum but for adults. Saligman said she is excited to bring a new kind of experience to the city.
“I think the Ministry of Awe is adding a little, perhaps sass and irreverence,” she said. “An alternative experience within a very historic area and an evolving creative space that hopefully is an ongoing call and response where some innovative artwork gets made.”
And even though the old bank is filled with art from bottom to top, she noted that this is just the beginning.
“We’re willing to let it evolve organically, but it is important to us that it’s a space that evolves,” she said, “that there will always be active art making in it, and that it’s generative — that it hopefully could help sustain artists and be a place of collaboration and creativity.”
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