In a city with more pizzerias per capita than any other outside of Italy, a Museum of Pizza seems redundant. But New York City is getting one anyway, arriving for just two weeks this fall from Oct. 13-28 at Brooklyn’s William Vale Hotel, 55 Wythe Ave. in Williamsburg.
Described as “the world’s first experiential pizza adventure,” #MoPi will open the weekend after the massive — and this time totally legit — New York City Pizza Festival in the Bronx.
What’s inside the Museum of Pizza?
Created by a group of vloggers called the Nameless Network, the Museum of Pizza is hyped as “a place to take amazing photos and absorb every wonder of our larger-than-life, immersive installations” and “bask in multi-sensory, psychedelic pizza joy.”
So expect more Instagram-focused Museum of Ice Cream than actually educational Museum of Chocolate. How “museum” became the preferred term for these selfie-focused artsy pop-ups is a question for historians to grapple with. You’re here to take photos, not get philosophical. To that end, #MoPi will have large-scale immersive rooms, a fluorescent “pizza vortex,” a “pizza beach” (if you’ve got any ideas of what that could be, we’d love to hear it), a cheese cave and an art gallery that will include a portion of Scott Weiner’s pizza box collection, verified by Guinness World Records as the largest in the world.
Activities will include pizza meditations and film screenings — we don’t know if this almost certainly NSFW promotional video is any indication, but it’s worth experiencing:
So what will the Museum of Pizza really be? A paradise of pepperoni-print life preservers floating in a yellow ball pit, or getting spanked with a pizza slice-shaped paddle in Little Caesar’s dungeon? We’ll find out in October. Tickets are $35 for timed entry Tuesday-Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
There’s also a slice of pizza included in the ticket price, though you may not get it on-site? There are still a few details being worked out. A portion of ticket sales will go to provide a meal to a family in need.
“The Museum of Pizza balances the ‘museum’ aspect with the magic of pizza to disrupt the expectations of what a pop-up can be,” Kareem Rahma, founder of the Museum of Pizza, says in a statement. “We believe that art should be at the forefront of culture, not the backdrop, and hope that visitors find MoPi to be an awesome, one-of-a-kind experience that changes the way they think about pizza, and art. And it’s going to be fun, duh!”
It’s definitely been the season of the pop-up in New York. The bucket list-worthy Rosé Mansion just extended its run through, and the Candyland meets Willy Wonka exhibit that is Candytopia started an open-ended run in August. Even Deadpool got into the act with the Be Your Best Selfie Museum to promote the release of its sequel. California sensation Color Factory impressed with its brainy exhibits, which is also on an open-ended run in Chelsea.
