Ministry of Awe is a really, really strong "one of those."
You know, "one of those." We can't just keep calling it a "Meow Wolf thing", but "immersive narrative art installation" is a mouthful. If they were video games, they'd be walking sims, but as they take place in meat space, we can't very well reduce them to "walking." Perhaps I'll take this moment to pitch "art funhouse," which I'll use for the rest of the review for at least clarity of comparison.
Spearheaded by Philadelphia muralist Meg Seligman, the Ministry of Awe is six floors of installations, all tangentially on the theme of banking, apt for the old bank building the attraction has revived. These range from the literal, in the forms of vaults and managerial offices (albeit each peculiar in their own way), to Gilliam-esque wordplays like departments for both Securities and Insecurities. Each exhibit is led by a local artist, including magicians Lindsay and Francis Menotti, Black Immersive Creator's Grant winner Taj Rauch, and of course, spectacular murals by Meg Seligman, many of which are enhanced by creative applications of tech.
The exhibits are inventive, clever, and consistently surprising. Personal favorites include a room-sized jewelbox, with a combination of analogue music boxes synced to digital music, holographic projections, and perfectly whimsical set dressing, like a sofa made out of a ring holder. Consistently entertaining are also Gill Seligman's fanciful robots, hacked out of old office equipment; I was immensely startled, then delighted by one that spun to follow me around the room, spitting out ticker tape like a rattlesnake warning an intruder.
Speaking of tech, it's worth noting that there are applications of LLM-based artificial intelligence in a handful of exhibitions, such as a table to practice signature forgeries and have them scanned and analyzed. While there are those who would critique any use of the technology under a "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine, I found the inclusions tasteful, restrained, and not displacing potential live actors.
Where Ministry of Awe stumbles is in the same all art funhouses stumble on. The exhibits, broadly tactile and encouraging touch, will suffer under the weight of thousands of hands, and require constant upkeep. The non-linear nature of the building can lead to odd bottlenecks and moments of silence. Perhaps slightly worse than many other art funhouses, the narrative throughlines are so deeply hidden in the marginalia, it is hard to know where to even begin to unravel the secrets of the Ministry.
Where Ministry of Awe perhaps beats other art funhouses is its tactility and specificity. Finding its home in the well-trod streets of Old City Philadelphia, it embraces its local identity. Installations heavily use physical antiques, in addition to modern fabrication techniques and media technology. It takes the foundational bones of the building and builds off of them, rather than the typical narrative of the building providing a portal to elsewhere. The ethos of the project explicitly encourages finding wonder in the every-day, and to provide a complete escape would contradict that.
Is this a location I will regularly revisit? Likely not; art funhouse is not necessarily my favorite subgenre under the immersive umbrella. However, I can't help but think it would make a fun date night one of these days. In a popular, tourist-heavy part of town, yet close enough to a number of local favorite bars and restaurants, I see Ministry of Awe succeeding as a popular destination for visitors and locals alike.
Ministry of Awe is now open in Philadelphia, PA tickets are $29.99 for adults and $19.99 for Children 3-13.
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