City Museum – New art near the new aquarium section

Sunday began with a boozy brunch downtown at Rooster. As always, their crepes were great and thankfully on this morning the place wasn’t too busy. Waiting outside in the cold wind would have been a hard thing to do. After brunch we headed over to the City Museum, for some indoor play.

The City Museum is like no other museum that I’ve ever heard of and certainly unlike any that I’ve visited. There are aspects to the place that are like a museum, but they are certainly not its main attraction. Running around, climbing over obstacles, squeezing through small apertures and sliding down, down, down again, these are the things that people come to experience at the City Museum. Blue jeans are required and knee pads are recommended, not your usual museum attire.

The museum is supposed to have a pretty good first-aid service or so I’ve heard. It’s not surprising, considering the whole place is like an accident waiting to happen. I imagine that they have pretty good lawyers too. Almost everywhere you look, in every corner is some example of art that someone, probably a young poorly paid art student, labored over for hours. Sometimes scary, usually weird, the figures all seem gleamed from strange dreams.

Dan ended up with the best story of the day. While crawling through the tunnels, the oldest, darkest and scariest section of the museum, he was creeping along, just minding his own business. A family, with a small boy was ahead of him. Dan waited for them to proceed, before crawling further along. The boy just then happened to turn around and turned to face Dan. At eye level, inches apart, the boy screamed, “There’s a man back there!” Inconsolable by his parents the boy wanted to leave. All part of City Museum’s all enveloping art experience.