How many of us have geeked out over Star Wars, Interstellar, and Ghostbusters, dreamed of a scientific lab of our own, and experimented with a baking soda volcano at home?
While there is no way we can recreate scientific concepts in the books and movies we have come to love, we do have something 10 times better, and more fun.
NYC is brimming with interactive museums – hands-on exhibits that let you engage with science, art, culture, and history in a unique way. These interactive museums in NYC showcase everything from Broadway and transit history to mind-bending illusions and science exhibits.
So, no matter if you are out on a leisurely tour of the city or want to learn a thing or two to satisfy your inner geek, these are the best interactive museums in NYC that will turn your passions into a dynamic adventure.
The Museum of Broadway
Address: 145 W 45th Street, New York, NY 10036, United States
Exhibits like The Museums of Broadway are part of a growing recognition of New York interactive museums that are so much better to experience rather than just being told about. It tells the culture and history of Broadway with hundreds of artifacts, costumes, and props.
The museum has teamed up with historians and artists to create an immersive experience involving a Map Room, a fully equipped rehearsal room, special exhibits, and a timeline of theater pioneers, plays, and musicals.
Sloomoo Institute
Address: 475 Broadway, New York, NY 10013, United States
Interactive museums evoke curiosity and excitement among children and adults, and Sloomoo Institute allows a kind of exploration that you won’t stop talking about for weeks.
This whole world of colorful and deliciously scented slime is an ASMR dream – this interactive museum in NYC combines sounds, colors, and scents to create sensory joy, and you can also make your own slime at the DIY bar using more than 4,000,000 combinations.
American Museum of Natural History
Address: 200 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024, United States
The American Museum of Natural History is one of the best interactive museums in NYC, and it allows hands-on and unique experiences for people of all ages. Check out this premier attraction to explore the universe as you know it, including millions of species of animals, plants, fungi, minerals, and fossils.
There are also human cultural artifacts, especially frozen tissues, that offer better opportunities to talk about genomic data. Explore their immersive exhibitions like the Invisible Worlds, where you become part of every scale of life with unique projections.
Color Factory
Address: 251 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, United States
Color Factory makes you feel as if you have stepped into Van Gogh’s painting palette. Take your time to tinker and learn with colors, and marvel at exhibits like a confetti-filled park, disorienting and dreamy NYC scenes, a golden glow room that comes alive with tunes as you slip on headphones, and the famous jump into a pool of blue and sparkling balls.
This interactive museum in NYC also collaborates with designers and architects to create large-scale art, murals, and immersive stories to create surreal and imaginative projections of our everyday world.
New York Hall of Science
Address: 47-01 111th Street, Queens, NY 11368, United States
The New York Hall of Science, in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, is one of the best NYC interactive museums to discover hands-on science and technology experience. With exhibits like The Big Bubble Experiment, Celestial Circus SciSkate, and Powering the City, you will leave with an entirely different perspective on science, tech, math, and engineering.
Its STEM playground, the largest in NYC, is now open all year long. So, visit anytime you like to interact with everything science with their exciting exhibits, experiences, and programs.
New York Transit Museum
Address: 99 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201, United States
If you are near the greater New York City metropolitan region, check out the New York Transit Museum, where you can get on vintage NYC subways, sit behind a city bus wheel, explore a range of turnstiles, and other changing displays highlighting the social, cultural and technological history of mass transit.
However, this interactive museum in NYC also probes the future of New York buses, subways, and commuter rail systems, so take it to the various exhibits like Underground NYC Tour and Party on Wheels!
Mercer Labs
Address: 21 Dey Street, New York, NY 10007, United States
This art museum lets you participate in impressive mirror, light, and sound installations, making Mercer Labs one of the best interactive museums in NYC. It’s a comparatively smaller space than other New York interactive museums, but the fifteen exhibition spaces and unique encounters establish a relationship between technology and art that you might have never seen before.
Roy Nachum, the brain behind this museum, pushes the boundaries of artistic expression with works like The Crown Kid, in which a gold crown covering the eyes of a child symbolizes blindness from displaced desires and values.
Harry Potter: The Exhibition
Address: 50 W 34th Street, New York, NY 10001, United States
Harry Potter has a strange grip on its fans’ emotions, one that attracts them to Harry Potter Exhibitions throughout the world. With this iconic interactive experience now open in New York City, you can enjoy a multi-sensory fan experience involving authentic film props, costumes, and interactive behind-the-scenes surprises.
Your favorite scenes and settings from the movies are also recreated at this interactive museum. Look out for the Golden Snitch medallions and earn points for your Hogwarts House, casting spells and brewing potions as you go. Find them across Macy’s street; the tickets start at $29.
ARTECHOUSE
Address: 439 W 15th Street, New York, NY 10011, United States
Provocative and experimental, ARTECHOUSE showcases unusual and interactive exploration of art, science, and technology. Thanks to a brilliant team of designers, we get to experience bold and powerful exhibitions like the ones from Afrosurrealist artists, where the poetry and digital artists believe that The spirit of aṣẹ reverberates with the meditative exhibition.
Other exhibits that use cutting-edge technologies make ARCTECHOUSE a terrific interactive museum in NYC that you must visit.
SUMMIT One Vanderbilt
Address: 45 E 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017, United States
SUMMIT One Vanderbilt doesn’t fit into your typical definition of interactive museums in NYC. It is a popular tourist attraction with three levels involving multi-sensory and mind-bending experiences.
With the observation deck, they take the art and technology blend to new levels as you take on a new perspective of the city atop the fourth tallest skyscraper in NYC. Beautiful installations, like a glass-bottomed elevator, the structureless world of AIR, and 1,100 ft high suspended glass ledges, offer heart-racing perceptions of New York City.
Museum of Illusions
Address: 77 8th Avenue, New York, NY 10014, United States
Have fun deceiving your eyes with this world of kaleidoscopes, tilted rooms, holograms, and reverse rooms. This interactive museum in NYC is built in a historical building, meant to be mesmerizing, and it takes only 90 minutes to go through all the illusional experiences.
We specifically love their illusion rooms that encompass perspective-changing installations, enthralling rooms, and spellbinding images. Don’t forget seeing is believing!
SPYSCAPE
Address: 928 8th Avenue, New York, NY 10019, United States
SPYSCAPE is one of the highly popular interactive museums in NYC focused on immersive stories and secrets. Either indulge in the SPY GAMES and train your brain for pulse-racing fun, or immerse in the SPYHQ surveillance and coding world where you live your dreams of becoming a spy, field agent, or cryptologist.
Build your team with other super spies who visit the museum or celebrate a private event or birthday party. We can assure you there are enough roles to play at this museum that you will want to come back to this NYC interactive museum again.
RiseNY
Address: 160 W 45th Street, New York, NY 10036, United States
The first-ever subway station in the city welcomes you to watch an immersive movie where you get to know how New York became a crossroads system.
There is plenty of other stuff you can do at this interactive museum in NYC, like exploring the artifacts from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and other interactive galleries, enjoying a soaring flight over NYC’s skyline with a simulation ride, and exploring the star-studded memorabilia and historical artifacts from the Music, Broadway, and Film history of NYC.
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