• Balloon Museum returns to New York with an immersive inflatable installation by Marina Abramović.
• The fantastical environment imagines an extraterrestrial meadow filled with balloon “snowflakes,” light, and circulating air currents.
• Opening in July at the Tin Building, the show expands the museum’s global inflatable-art program.

The Balloon Museum is returning to New York this summer—with an art-world titan in tow.

For its new permanent outpost, the museum dedicated to inflatable art has commissioned world-renowned performance artist Marina Abramović for a sprawling new installation. Snowy/Windy/Spring On The Planet Z looks to be a fantastical botanical garden that will match its whimsical title. Abramović, who was originally supposed to be at a press preview, could not make it due to a cold, but furnished a detailed one-page statement about the inspiration for the project and why it’s a natural (if unpredictable) fit with her longtime practice.

“As a child, I imagined a place far behind our own sky. A planet with its own weather, its own atmosphere, its own logic entirely. It was my own version of science fiction. How did it feel on this planet? Was it snowy, windy, or could you sense the first green breath of spring—I called it Planet Z.”

Rendering of Marina Abramović, SNOWY / WINDY / SPRING ON THE PLANET Z (2026). Image courtesy of the Balloon Museum.

In addition to recognizing the balloon as a fundamental childhood object, Abramović also explained how “air has always been central to my practice,” sharing how she and fellow artist and collaborator Ulay created Breathing In/Breathing Out in 1977, a performance during which they affixed their mouths to each other and blocked their nostrils with cigarette filters.

The artist compared it to the medium at hand: “When you blow air into a balloon, you perform a version of this. You give something of yourself.”

At her new installation, individual “balloons” resemble large green blades of grass with a white snowy path winding through the garden-like atmosphere. The artist drew on “a vision of an extraterrestrial, snow-covered meadow,” where “currents of air will circulate balloon ‘snowflakes’ into a constant flurry… walls will emanate a soft, diffused light, producing a ‘whiteout effect,’” according to a statement.

“We are honored to realize Marina’s vision at this pivotal moment in her career,” said Roberto Fantuazzi, the founder and CEO of Lux Entertainment, the firm behind the immersive museum.

Abramović’s latest installation follows the presentation of her ambitious four-hour performance piece, Balkan Erotic Epic, in the U.K. in 2025; the work is opening at New York’s Park Avenue Armory in December 2026. She is also slated to become the first living woman artist to show at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, in a solo exhibition coinciding with the Venice Biennale.

The Balloon Museum, which had a 2023 stint at a temporary space at New York’s Pier 36 on the Lower East Side, is now taking over the Tin Building in the South Street Seaport. The building was the site of an ambitious food hall and multi-restaurant space launched by star chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, which shuttered recently after just a few years of operation.

To date, the Balloon Museum—which initially launched in Rome, then expanded to Paris, Asia, and ultimately New York—said it has welcomed seven million visitors. The Tin Building space will open in July.