Well, it was fun while it lasted, but it appears the city is sending its pertinent agencies after the New Museum to enforce various laws that its Carson Höller exhibition might be breaking with its giant slide, carousel, and floating sensory deprivation pool. The latter has already been reduced from a two-person experience to a solo trip after Department of Health officials discovered that the museum didn’t have the pertinent bathhouse permits.
The Post reports that the DOH contacted the NuMu two days after the German conceptual artist’s first major New York retrospective, Experience, opened. “The Health Department contacted administrators at the New Museum,” says DOH official John Kelly, “and advised them of the requirements in the Health Code and the conditions that would require approval and a permit.” In response, the museum decided to limit use of the floating “Psycho Tank” installation to one person at a time.
Though the museum didn’t have the pertinent permit, it did require visitors intending to try out the floating pool to sign a waiver, which includes the assertion that they do not “have any communicable diseases or other adverse health conditions that could be transmitted by being in water with others.”
But the city isn’t stopping with the tank of salty, body-temperature water. As of Friday evening the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs “are also investigating whether other parts of the exhibit—a giant slide and a carousel—meet city regulations.”
If you’ve been dying to try the slide, better get on down to the Bowery soon before the city ruins everybody’s fun.