The new Museum of Illusions in New York: It will boggle your mind

NEW YORK--Manhattan has a new museum that aims to boggle the mind.

The Museum of Illusions opened this week in a historic old bank building in Chelsea. It has more than 70 exhibits based on science, mathematics, biology, and psychology.

But it’s not that straightforward. The museum consists of illusionistic rooms, optical illusions and a playroom with didactic games and puzzles.

And unlike other museums, visitors can run, scream, touch exhibits, and take as many photos as they want.

“Not only is it an Instagram-friendly place. It’s educational,” Renne Gjoni, CEO of the Museum of Illusions, said during a recent tour.

The idea is to teach visitors about perception, vision, and the human brain. In essence, sometimes our eyes see things that our brains don’t understand.

The New York Museum of Illusions is one of seven around the world. The first one opened in Zagreb, Croatia. The others are in: Kuala Lumpur, Muscat in Oman, Vienna, Ljubljana in Slovenia, and Zadar in Croatia.

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The New York museum covers about 4,500 square feet over two floors.

It has several rooms such as the Tilted Room, which lets visitors see if they can manage to walk on a slanted floor.

The Infinity Room has a set or mirrors with one fully reflective mirror and one partially reflective mirror. The one-way mirror reflects an image back onto the fully reflective mirror in a recursive manner. It creates a series of infinite reflections.

In the Ames Room, people or objects appear to grow or shrink when moving from one corner to the other.

The Rotated Room creates the illusion that visitors are walking all over, including on the ceiling.

There are holograms, moving pictures that make it seem like the image is swiveling and following you, and a head on a platter.

There are also various illusions in which objects appear to be different sizes when in fact they are the same. For example, the Jastrow Illusion makes the bottom shape appear larger than the top shape. It is not. The brain doesn’t compare the shapes as a whole. Rather, it compares the sides of the shapes that are touching each other.

“It’s a 21st century museum,” says Roko Zivkovic, director of the museum. “It’s a different concept. Everyone loves it from school groups to adults.”

Gjoni plans to expand the concept to other places in North America such as Kansas City and Toronto.

The New York museum will be open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Admission is $19 for adults and $15 for children.