I scream, you scream, we all scream for — shhh! You’re in a museum!
For the next month, a scrumptious new gallery in the Meatpacking District is chilling out overheated New Yorkers. And their brain freezes won’t come from intensely focusing on modern art, but from scarfing down a vanilla cone too fast. Here’s the inside scoop on the Museum of Ice Cream.
Created by friends Maryellis Bunn and Manish Vora, the funky attraction was inspired by a surreal dream Bunn had in which she was floating on a pool of sprinkles. Development of the passion project began just three months ago, and the chic final product is part art presentation, part playground, part Dairy Queen.
The most pressing question: How much ice cream does each lucky visitor get? One scoop and one soft-serve cone. But don’t fret, sugar freaks, there’s a candy wall and ample Dove chocolates on-site, too. A single adult ticket for the 25-minute experience costs $18.
As you enter the museum, which has the white industrial look of a Lady Gaga music video, you chow down on your first treat. The creameries change every day, but on a recent visit the flavor on offer was Blue Marble’s vanilla topped with Froot Loops and a guava-lime sauce.
Next comes the Scoop Room, where you’ll be bombarded by wacky trivia. Did you know the world’s largest cone stands 10 feet tall? Or that America’s favorite dessert first emerged in China in 1000 B.C.? My favorite: George Washington ate $200 worth of ice cream every summer (the equivalent of $5,000 today).
Hip, sexy guides mill around chatting with patrons. And if you think the helpers look like green-and-orange Oompa Loompas, you’d be right. Willy Wonka’s influence is felt everywhere here. In the Chocolate Chamber, while surrounded by projections of liquid cocoa, an ambient cover of the film’s “Pure Imagination” blares. Elsewhere, the exhibit dives into the scrumdiddlyumptious science of food.
One mind-bending experiment uses “Miracle Berry” tablets, which temporarily alter a person’s taste buds to perceive sour foods as sweet. After allowing the pill to dissolve, the taster enjoys a vanilla cone with two lemon wedges. You won’t pucker up, though. Pairing ice cream with lemon seems insane, but the berry pills makes it taste like refreshing pink lemonade.
Alongside the zany activities, there is also the traditional art expected of a museum. Thirty-two artists contributed to a room of floor-to-ceiling ice cream-inspired works, including paintings, sculptures and photos. Some are even rideable. There’s a scooper see-saw and an ice-cream-sandwich swing.
The museum’s pièce de résistance, however, is the ultimate Instagram fantasy: a pool filled with sprinkles. OK, they’re not real sprinkles; they’re small, multicolored pieces of plastic. Vora says a local confection factory did offer him 8,000 pounds of the actual sugar topping, “but that wouldn’t be sanitary.” Instead, there are 11,000 pounds of tiny artificial dots in the 3-foot-deep pool, which were added bucket by bucket.
Taking a dip in 5½ tons of sprinkles is a giddy, childlike pleasure. Anybody would get a kick out of it — even the lactose intolerant. But swimmers beware: Just like after a trip to a sandy beach, you’ll be discovering sprinkles in weird places for days.
Tickets: $18 adults; $12 kids. Monday, Wednesday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Closed Tuesday. 100 Gansevoort St.; MuseumOfIceCream.com. Through Aug. 31.
