Color Factory Chicago explores our connection to color
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The beginning of Color Factory Chicago. Photo: Justin Kaufmann/Axios
It's about time a new immersive art museum engages both our brains and our social media feeds.
- That's what's happening at Color Factory Chicago in the basement of the Willis Tower.
What's happening: A collection of art installments designed to explore our connection to color through vision, sound, touch and even taste.
Flashback: The Color Factory started in San Francisco in 2017 and now has three locations: New York, Houston and Chicago.
Highlights: The journey starts by picking a colored macaroon from a conveyor belt. From there, you taste candy, listen to tubas and even draw as you visit 15 installments.
- In one room, you're given a set of individual packets of pop rocks and a viewfinder. Your job is to pair the taste to the color you see in the viewfinder, proving that our memories associate certain foods with certain colors — for example, bubble gum.
- Another room offers a cacophony of Chicago colors in confetti form, great for taking photos.
Of note: The main event is a St. Patrick's Day-river-inspired ball pit like those of your fast-food childhoods.
- The ball pit is not for the anxious among us, because it's filled with screaming kids and a lot of bare feet, but it's also a lot of fun.
If you go: Open Tuesday–Sunday, 9am–8pm.