WNDR Boston: An Immersive, Interactive, and Innovative Experience

As visitors emerge from a darkened entryway, the noise and bustle of the city transforms into a vibrant, enthralling realm within Boston’s WNDR Museum. Visitors are greeted with a fantastical and unique display of LED flowers sprawled across the walls, saturating the space with the brilliant liveliness and childlike creativity that defines the museum.

The WNDR Museum — an immersive, interactive museum from Chicago — opened its newest expansion in Boston on Feb. 2. Its largest location to date, the museum located in Downtown Crossing presents more than 20 unique exhibits that harmonize art and technology in innovative ways. Reinventing the museum space, WNDR creatively facilitates a multi-sensory, intimate interaction between the visitors and the artworks.

The museum stands at the forefront of revolutionary museum experiences; its Chicago location was one of the first immersive museums in the world, according to Giancarlo Natale, the general manager of the Boston location. At WNDR, visitors are taken on an immersive journey to personally and creatively engage with the art.

From the moment visitors walk in, they are immediately invited to participate in the creative process at the Artist Table, leaving their first mark on the museum. Throughout the exhibits, bold, exclamatory signs readily invite the visitors to “TOUCH THIS ART,” fostering an extraordinary sensorial relationship between the art and the audience. Traversing through wondrous exhibits, visitors’ silhouettes interact with a display of neurons in “Lake Shore Drive (LSD),” their movements direct the otherworldly flow of Simon Burgin’s “WNDRWall,” and the music they compose translates into mesmerizing visuals in Andy Arkley’s “Glorious Vision of a Rainbow.” Visitors are not only in conversation with the art, but also in control.

Innovative technology, such as AI, also plays an integral role in the visitor’s experiences with the art. One intriguing exhibit, “Untitled, by You,” invites the audience to submit imaginative, text-based descriptions to a custom AI program, Stable Diffusion, to curate a unique gallery of the visitor’s vision. The inventive convergence of contemporary art and modern technology fosters an entirely new, inclusive approach to art, in which anyone is empowered to create from their imagination.

To Natale, new technology like AI is now an integral part of the field.

“AI is a tool that helps bring the new generation into art through a different lens — if that makes sense — using technology and next-level thinking,” said Natale. “This is the future, and we are living in it.”

Beyond exhibits designed by the WNDR Studio team, the museum also features notable contemporary artists such as Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama and her exhibit, “Let’s Survive Forever.” Created in 2017, the exhibit explores Kusama’s state of mind and her enduring fascination with eternity and infinity. The powerful exhibit, in which visitors spend one minute alone in a mirror room filled with reflective spheres, confronts its visitors with seemingly endless images of oneself and represents the eternal interconnectedness of the world. A slight deviation from the light-hearted ephemerality of the other exhibits, Kusama’s exhibit is a profound, introspective space where visitors not only have the opportunity to be in close contact with a well-known artist’s intimate thoughts, but also to reflect on their own.

Across all of the exhibits, WNDR seeks to more deeply connect visitors with the art and create an intimate, involved relationship between them. The boundary between audience and artist is blurred, putting the power of creation in viewers’ hands.

“Our theme here is ‘We Are All Artists,’” Natale said. “People ask me what WNDR is, and I like to say WNDR is between wandering and wondering.”

Brian Haines, the chief experience officer of WNDR, elaborated on the museum’s theme, emphasizing the importance of cultivating one’s creativity and wonder regardless of their artistic background.

“Everybody, somewhere, is an artist. Even if you don’t know it, we’re hoping that you can find that throughout the museum. By the fact you participated in our museum, you are an artist,” Haines said.

Journeying through the exhibits of WNDR is an “escape from the outside world,” as Haines described. An amalgamation of unique artists, individual styles, and interactive elements, WNDR enthralls the visitors with its innovative beauty and profound experiences. WNDR broadens the possibilities of museum experiences and embraces the future of modern art, creating a freeing space where everyone can become in touch with their inner creative wonder.