Balloon Museum Announces First Permanent U.S. Flagship at New York City’s Historic Tin Building
Globally Renowned Balloon Museum Announces First Permanent U.S. Flagship at New York City’s Historic Tin Building
Inaugural exhibition DAYDREAM, AIR BECOMES ART, an artistic, interactive, and playful experience featuring Marina Abramović and leading international artists
Opens July 15th 2026
Tin Building in the Seaport, 96 South St, New York, NY 10038
New York, NY – June 4, 2026 – After captivating more than eight million visitors across Europe, North America, and Asia, Balloon Museum, the world’s first traveling inflatable art exhibition, has announced its most ambitious evolution yet: a permanent location at the historic Tin Building in Lower Manhattan’s Seaport, set to open July 15.
Launched in Italy as an experimental showcase, it created an unexpected way to experience art and has rapidly evolved into an international success story. Created by Lux Entertainment, it brings together exhibition-making, experiential design, and monumental, site-specific works, also serving as a platform for ambitious inflatable commissions developed with renowned artists. Its New York opening marks a defining chapter in one of the world’s most influential centers of cultural innovation.
DAYDREAM, AIR BECOMES ART, takes its name from that moment when, in the midst of ordinary daily life, we drift away from the everyday and slip into a dreamlike reality—head in the clouds, eyes elsewhere. This is not a dream in the sense of something ideal or out of reach, but a world you genuinely step into and experience for yourself: a dreamlike encounter that does not imitate the unreal, but instead makes reality denser and more vivid. Featuring acclaimed and award-winning names, the exhibition offers a concept-driven sensory journey in which the familiar gives way to the surreal. These installations invite the discovery of new perspectives and active engagement, triggering a radical emotional activation in which air itself becomes art.
“Balloon Museum was founded on the idea that air and inflatables could become a powerful contemporary language,” said Roberto Fantauzzi, Founder & CEO of Lux Entertainment and President of Balloon Museum LLC (USA). “Establishing a permanent home in New York is an extraordinary milestone for our organization and a reflection of how far this vision has grown.”
DAYDREAM unfolds as a collective show, organized into a sequence of dreamlike settings — works that use light, sound, color, reflection, volume, and air as materials, inviting exploratory forms of interaction and redefining the relationship between body, movement, and space. At its center is Marina Abramović‘s new installation, SNOWY/WINDY/SPRING ON PLANET Z. Inspired by childhood imagination and the ephemeral nature of breath, it marks her first sustained exploration of light, air, and environment as an immersive installation. Visitors move through a field of shoulder-high inflatable grass and swirling artificial snow, immersed in a glowing white world reminiscent of a wintery extraterrestrial meadow.
The exhibition unfolds through works that invite exploratory forms of interaction, redefining the relationship between body, movement, and space.
In Work No. 3883: Half the air in a given space, Turner Prize winner Martin Creed fills a transparent greenhouse filled with hundreds of blue balloons that “contain” half of the enclosed air, creating a playful and disorienting encounter with volume, density, and absence. Alex Schweder’s giant mirrored ball in Our Breath, Her Joy transforms air and light into architectural media through fabric-covered lungs that rise and fall as it “breathes.” In Black Hole Horizon, Thom Kubli turns sound into matter, using compressed air to release soap bubbles that drift through the room in a shifting choreography.
Participation becomes central in Boris Acket’s There, Where I am Absent. Visitors lie beneath an overhead mirror, where their reflections merge with a kinetic sculpture featuring a single, isolated mechanical wing suspended from the ceiling, completing what is physically absent. In Karina Smigla-Bobinski’s ADA, a helium-filled, charcoal-spiked sphere floats freely through the room, moved by the audience and leaving continuously transforming traces across the walls, ceiling, and floor.
The path continues through poetic and uncanny landscapes that heighten the senses and suspend the everyday. 10 Agosto by Hyperstudio evokes a suspended constellation of swings, shimmering lights, and glowing orbs. The installation is inspired by the Night of San Lorenzo, an Italian tradition on the feast day of Saint Lawrence, when festivalgoers look for shooting stars. Invisible Ballet builds an unstable choreography of airborne spherical chrome balloons, transforming the space into a living, constantly changing device. In The Carousel, Valerio Berruti reimagines the carousel as a collection of larger-than-life fiberglass birds, presenting a meditation on childhood, time, and freedom.
“DAYDREAM speaks to a culture that has made escape and emotional intensity part of everyday life. Through the ephemeral monumentality of air, the featured voices create spaces that loosen us from the ordinary and hold us, if only for a moment, in a state of wonder. Bringing this debut to New York allows us to explore how creative expression can open new horizons for emotion and reflection,” said Valentino Catricalà, curator of DAYDREAM, AIR BECOMES ART.
Situated along Manhattan’s historic waterfront, the Tin Building offers a fitting permanent home for this next chapter. Located within one of downtown’s most distinctive lifestyle destinations, the Seaport provides a dynamic setting for large-scale programming, public engagement, and year-round initiatives. The opening expands the district’s creative footprint, bringing a new anchor to Lower Manhattan.
Tickets will be available starting June 8. Further details surrounding opening dates and public programming will be announced in the coming weeks.
For more information, visit balloonmuseum.world.
About Balloon Museum and Lux Entertainment
Conceived and produced by Lux Entertainment, Balloon Museum debuted in Italy in 2021 and has grown into one of the leading international cultural initiatives, attracting over 8 million visitors worldwide.
Recognized as an example of Italian excellence, it is supported by the Italian Ministry of Culture and has received three World Best Event Awards and eight Italian Best Event Awards for excellence in experiential entertainment and exhibition design.
Its productions have traveled to 23 major cities across Europe, North America, and Asia, in iconic venues such as the Grand Palais in Paris, La Nuvola in Rome, Mana Wynwood in Miami, and Marina Bay Sands in Singapore.
Lux Entertainment is a leading Italian company specializing in touring and site-specific formats that combine monumental installations, interactive environments, and live performances.
About the Seaport
Located along the East River in Lower Manhattan, the Seaport is one of NYC’s original neighborhoods, rich in maritime history and landmark views of the Brooklyn Bridge and skyline. Today, it is a vibrant community and premier destination with over 450,000 square feet of dining, entertainment, and public offerings.
Through year-round programming, the Seaport supports local organizations and community connection. It is also a key NYC destination for major events, including the Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks® and the New York City Wine and Food Festival.
Balloon Museum Hours:
Monday: 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Tuesday: 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Wednesday: 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Thursday: 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Friday: 10 a.m. – 10 p.m.
Saturday: 10 a.m. – 10 p.m.
Sunday: 10 a.m. – 10 p.m.
Ticket Pricing:
Adult (18-65) begins at $40
Ages 13 – 17, 65+, and Adults with Disability begin at $33 Child (4-12) begins at $26
Family (1 Adult + 2 Children) begins at $81 Family (2 Adults + 1 Child) begins at $93 Family (2 Adults + 2 Children) begins at $116
Family (2 Adults + 3 Children) begins at $139
Flex Ticket for Adult (available for six months, can be used at any time, accommodates 1 re-entry):$77 Flex Ticket for Child (available for six months, can be used at any time, accommodates 1 re-entry): $53
Media Contact:
Katrina Stewart
Account Manager, Visual Arts
Blue Medium
T: +1-212-675-1800
katrina@bluemedium.com