The Museum Of Pizza Is A Marketing Success For A Small New York Pizzeria And Pizza Artists, But A Small Slice Of Insight Into America’s Favorite Pie
by Heather Cassell
Attendees gobbled up the latest food pop-up “museum,” The Museum of Pizza hit New York last week with hundreds of people flowing through the interactive exhibit.
The exhibit billed as the “world’s first and only immersive art experience celebrating pizza” opened at the at The William Vale in the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn October 13.
A line queued up outside the hotel for those who didn’t pre-purchase their $35tickets to the interactive Instagrabale pop-up exhibit devoted entirely to the slice produced by Kareem Rahma, CEO of Nameless Network, a New York-based entertainment production company.
The exhibit is open now through November 18.
Attendees wander through about 10 rooms filled with about 70 pieces of multimedia artwork dedicated to various aspects of the pie before landing in the pizzeria at the end for a slice of Williamsburg Pizza.
Upon entering the exhibit, attendees are introduced to pizza with a few factoids about the history of the pie by rotating fact cards appearing on the walls of the first room. Guests learn that there was evidence of a variety of flatbreads with toppings, the predecessors to the modern slice, found by archaeologists. Pizzerias began popping up all over the Northeastern United States during the early 1900s and bars adopted pizza as an easy inexpensive bar-food to serve starting in 1933s to more recent references to pizza in the Mutant Ninja Turtles movies.
The next room is less about historical reference points to more about art dedicated to pizza. In this room spectators examine a selection of the world’s largest collection of pizza boxes (given the official stamp by the Guinness Book of World Records) owned by New York-based pizza tour guide Scott Weiner, displayed on a single wall after being greeted by a guitar designed as a slice of pepperoni and mushroom pizza. These pieces of art are only the introduction to a variety of artwork such as a replica of Sandro Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” eating a slice of peperoni among other pieces of work on display at the exhibit.
This was all before visitors enter into the pizza wonderland where they hop from room to room bopping up and down on the DiGiorno pizza seesaw (which was so crowded that I couldn’t even get a picture), posing with pizza boxes in the neon pizza room, sitting back in comfy dough chairs watching movies where pizza makes a cameo appearance or is featured somehow, and several other very bright and colorful rooms dedicated to pizza.
The cheese room was seriously questionable. If you didn’t know it was supposed to resemble gooey melted mozzarella it looked sexually suspect in the “funky spunk” kind of way. You can forgive my misinterpretation at first glance if you saw the highly sexually suggestive circa early 1980s imagery used in the Museum of Pizza’s promotion campaign.
The exhibit is pure cheese made for amusement and smartphone cameras to capture social media memories. My friends and I have blown through these exhibits in under an hour leaving feeling incredibly underwhelmed by the lack of substance and the cheap
It’s not the first interactive exhibit or museum dedicated to pizza that promises foodie historians, budding flatbread culinary novices, and food lovers a little bit more nutrition adorning their cheesy slices.
It’s unrelated pop-up cousin The Pizza Experience opened October 1. In a similar
However, the US Museum of Pizza at the Roosevelt Collection, a new residential and shopping area located in downtown Chicago, is a permeant collection of pizza memorabilia and culinary art that opened in August.
Philadelphia serves up Pizza Brain, which claims to be the home to the world’s largest collection of pizza memorabilia and
Clearly, there is great love for the pie across America.
Girls That Roam hasn’t visited these other pie crazed extravaganzas coincidentally created by a cultural collective thought to jump on the pop-up exhibit bandwagon. At least three of the museums appear to be real if not closer to traditional museums and provide some substance into the history of pizza with permeant instillations.
The Museum of Pizza is kitschy marketing capitalizing on pop culture and giving the small Williamsburg Pizza restaurant a big boost in introducing their New York slice to locals and visitors alike.
The feel-good moment for walking into the pizza crazed maze is that a portion of every ticket provides a free meal for a family in need, according to the ticket website.
THE GAZE
The Museum of Pizza. The William Vale, 55 Wythe Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11249. themuseumofpizza.org.
TYPE OF EVENT: Pop-up Exhibit
RATING: 1
(5 = midnight blue; 4 = black; 3 = Aqua; 2 = orange; 1 = gold; and 0 = green)
THE TICKET: $$$ =$30 – $65
(price of average ticket to enter the event)
VIBE: Casual youthful crowd.
SCENE: Chill, interactive exhibit about pizza, more “art” than facts or in-depth history about the pie that has captivated the world since its birth in Naples, Italy.
SERVICE: Average, friendly. Signage to the exhibit could have been much better or at least had guides directing visitors to the location as it was in the back of the hotel on the bottom floor. Staffer were quick to get pizza out to attendees.
DAZZLE ME AGAIN: I haven’t been thrilled by these so-called pop-up museums that are interactive adult playgrounds surrounding a single subject theme that are incredibly Instagramable.
WHERE TO NEXT?: Unclear if The Museum of Pizza is going to transform into a traveling exhibit or if its going to vanish into the digestive system and disposed of until the next food pop-up exhibit comes along.
WORTH THE OUTTING?: Not worth the going out
Book your next trip to Brooklyn with GirlsThat Roam Travel. Contact Heather Cassell at Girls That Roam Travel at 415-517-7239 or at .
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