Can Mercer Labs Keep the Immersive “Museum” Trend Alive?

I’ve recently been hit with a barrage of social media ads for Mercer Labs, the newest representative of the past decade’s immersive/experiential/Instagram museum trend, opening this month in downtown Manhattan. Someone was clearly funneling significant money into advertising the museum, which found its niche at the intersection of "art and technology." Promotional videos showing eye–catching lights reflecting in mirrored rooms with guys in streetwear facing away from the camera, taking in the techy glory. Quick jump cuts bouncing between LED tableaus were hard to process. The non-stop ads reveal very little beyond a taste of the museum’s futuristic aesthetic. What was so fascinating to these mysterious men?

A descendant of the 2010s’ Meow Wolfs, Van Gogh experiences, and Museums of Ice Creams, Mercer Labs appears to be positioning itself as a cooler, artier version for the 2020s. Immersive museums have been polarizing—accessible and populist art or shameless cash grab?— and I’ve been confused by the cottage industry for years. Relying on novelty, it seems unlikely to produce, as Museum of Ice Cream founder Maryellis Bunn wished in 2017, "the next Disney." Yet, following its original boom, venture capitalists poured even more money into the industry post–pandemic lockdowns. The investment paid off, with reported revenues in the millions and expansions across the globe. These past few months, however, have brought difficulties. Meow Wolf is restructuring and laying off employees, and the company behind the Van Gogh Experience filed for bankruptcy. But Mercer Labs is plowing ahead, investing $35 million into renovating a former department store in New York’s financial district. While it was "in preview" ahead of its opening, I got a tour. 

Mercer Labs is housed in an austere, imposing building catty-corner to the Oculus (a mall/transportation hub at the World Trade Center). It was originally the East River Savings Bank, founded in 1848, according to the bronze plaque above its triple–height wrought–iron doors. As I approached the ticket booth, a PR representative, Isabelle, intercepted me, introducing me to the Lab’s chief of staff, Merm. Both were warm and friendly. They ushered me into The Window. Part foyer, part art piece, the room was pitch black save for a huge, circular screen on the ceiling. Sitting along the wall, I pawed blindly to put on my required, disposable shoe covers and watched a video of a crystalline 3D model rotating and morphing above.  

As I took it in slack–jawed, Merm rattled off a spiel that loosely connected the natural world, equality, social change, and the museum. Preemptively countering the criticism of Roy Nachum—the cofounder and artist behind all the pieces—and his use of projected, non-tactile (and thereby practically useless) braille, the Lab’s chief of staff offered a roundabout explanation that the accessible alphabet is used as a metaphor throughout the museum. Merm explained that Nachum was inspired by his grandmother’s blindness to use braille as a symbol to encourage sighted visitors to appreciate their vision. 

I could’ve zoned out in The Window for a while but was promptly guided to the next display, filled with even more content, now projected onto the walls and floor. My guides encouraged me to sit on an ergonomically awkward foam rock placed in the space’s center. From my perch, I watched videos of doves flying through and shattering glass panes. Digitally altered videos showed trees waving. Grass fields undulated. A few visitors milled around the space taking photos. One listlessly kicked back and forth on one of the rope swings littered around the room. I apologized to my two new friends for looking at my phone while taking notes. "It’s okay," Isabelle replied. "I give a lot of tours to influencers." 

While my handlers stood above me, Merm gave another speech about nature, equality, the "new and old school," and beauty. He seemed to attribute a lot to these abstract landscape images. Afterward, I read the press kit’s section on the room: "Compositions as representatives of life’s fleeting beauty are deconstructed and reconstructed to form the ‘perfect’ image of ‘new’ nature."

Amid Merm’s brags that the whole space was developed in under two years, it became clearer that the content of the art was secondary to the technological and physical scale of the medium. Nachum’s cofounder is real estate developer Michael Cayre. I found it more accurate to think of the Lab as a venue—a real estate gamble on Cayre’s and Nachum’s parts—than as a collection of art. Cayre comes from a real estate family—his father is part-owner of the World Trade Center next door. It makes sense they’d want to up the cool factor of the neighborhood.

The lab is an impressive piece of real estate. Although gimmicky, it’s the perfect place for expensive parties. A few rooms were even outfitted with barista stations/bars. Near the end of my tour, the chief of staff gestured to a hallway and explained, "This is just like the one Roy designed for 1OAK." The glowing, concentric circles running its length gave a svelte space station meets cigar club impression. Nachum is a talented vibe curator, at least.  

My guides assured me that the programming was planned to change. But the rooms seem to limit any future art shown in them. I struggle to see how the giant interactive chessboard could be anything but a giant interactive chessboard. A room filled with sand and outfitted with a robotic arm seemed like a limiting medium.

Artistically, many of the pieces seemed to rip off other, more popular works that performed well on social media. One room had a James Turrell–style light piece. I commented that The Beach (Nachum’s artwork) housed in Archetype (the robot room) was extremely similar to Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s viral Can’t Help Myself. Merm thought for a second and replied, "Yes, but isn’t this one so much more hopeful?" Admittedly, yes, Nachum had taken the Sisyphisian sadness from Yuan and Yu’s piece. Like the rest of the museum’s offerings, it was digestible at the expense of any substance. 

A litany of other technologically inspired rooms followed, each with its own grand, vague meaning supposedly influencing its design. A blue LED–lit, carpeted room hosted a sound bath of unidentifiable bassy noise so loud that I feared for my eardrums. ("The Elements represents our ongoing quest to comprehend, articulate, and resonate with the elemental forces that form the fabric of our existence," read the press kit.) In another room, pneumatic tubes carried to an unspecified destination digital representations of visitors' wishes, entered into an iPad moments before. ("The messages and wishes input by visitors, transcend time and space in a radiant display that mirrors the poetry of human existence.") A room covered in fake flowers—reminiscent of Raf Simons for Dior or Kim and Kanye’s wedding—is a place where "a sense of mindful contemplation permeates the atmosphere, inviting you to partake in a ritual that honors the present moment." 

Grand, sweeping political statements fall flat—a rung below Banksy-esque truisms. In Born Free, a music box proclaims (in braille) that "all human beings were born free and equal in dignity and rights. We are all one and the same, The same animal from the same great mother living this life as one. Without distinction of any kind." A press kit describes the museum as, "a place where diversity and inclusivity are celebrated…a reflection of change." With $52 tickets, problematic exploitations of braille, a presumably significant energy bill, and a huge footprint in a city battling a housing crisis, Mercer doesn’t crack up to be the progressive bastion it touts itself as.  

But it is an architectural and technological feat. It fails as a museum but does immersion well. New Nature (artwork) in The Dragon (room) was incredible. 507,000 LEDs reflected off mirrored walls to create abstract and figurative holograms. This is where Mercer Labs shines, swapping heady concepts for pure architectural and technological revelry. It’s the sort of thing a stoned teenager could enjoy.  

I gave in to New Nature’s pulsing light show. It was almost cathartic to see computational aesthetics brought into overwhelming relief. Relinquishing power to this physicalized all-powerful cultural, computational force that too often escapes understanding felt good. In an age when cloud tools and smooth UI obscure physical interactions with hardware, Mercer Labs conjures the awe computers used to command. The Lab’s blurb on New Nature was the only one I resonated with, an "interpretation of the romantic conception of the sublime." 

For that reason alone, Mercer goes in a different, marginally better, direction than its immersive contemporaries. With more hedonistic overtones, others in the genre have themed themselves with weed, sex, and psychedelia. An interesting premise is the extent of their appeal. Mercer’s theming is also questionable; it attempts to fashion its value by synthesizing fine art, Rube Goldberg–adjacent optical illusion machines, and moral platitudes. Like its competitors, Mercer Labs wagers that design should be immersive and practically useless—primarily a good photo op. But, as its competitors begin to fold, the museum seems to hope that pure power will prevail over style or substance. Brighter LEDs. Bigger rooms. More vibrant colors. Turning the dial to 11, it taps into something. Many of the rooms were pleasurable or, at minimum, engaging. Frequently, my eyes jumped around the displays, scrambling to digest the visuals. Mercer makes good on the promise of immersion—enough so to dent any cynicism, warranted or not. Similar to the interaction-mining social media platform where I first learned of its existence, Mercer advocates for a shamefully compelling view of design that optimizes engagement—practicality or meaning be damned.  

At the end of my tour, while briefly swapping weekend plans and pleasantries, Isabelle guided me to the gift store filled with beautiful objects: Teenage Engineering synths, water bottles, luxury soap, etc. She kindly offered me a free mochi and soda, which I consumed while reemerging into FiDi. The glass-paneled office buildings seem to have become more drab since I last saw them. 

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Images courtesy Mercer Labs